"_July 18._--The Esquimaux are camped by our side,--the whole settlement of Etah congregated around the 'big caldron' of Cape Alexander, to bid us good-bye. There are Metek and Nualik his wife, our old acquaintance Mrs Eider-duck, and their five children, commencing with Myouk, my body-guard, and ending with the ventricose little Accomodah. There is Nessark and Anak his wife; and Tellerk the 'Right Arm,' and Amaunalik his wife; and Sip-su, and Marsumah and Aningnah--and who not? I can name them every one, and they know us as well. We have found brothers in a strange land.
"Each one has a knife, or a file, or a saw, or some such treasured keepsake; and the children have a lump of soap, the greatest of all great medicines. The merry little urchins break in upon me even now as I am writing--'Kuyanake, kuyanake, Nalegak-soak!' 'Thank you, thank you, big chief!' while Myouk is crowding fresh presents of raw birds on me as if I could eat for ever, and poor Aningnah is crying beside the tent-curtain, wiping her eyes on a bird skin!
"My heart warms to these poor, dirty, miserable, yet happy beings, so long our neighbours, and of late so staunchly our friends. Theirs is no affectation of regret. There are twenty-two of them around me, all busy in good offices to the Docto Kayens; and there are only two women and the old blind patriarch Kresuk, 'Drift-wood,' left behind at the settlement.
"But see! more of them are coming up--boys ten years old pushing forward babies on their sledges. The whole nation is gipsying with us upon the icy meadows.
"We cook for them in our big camp-kettle; they sleep in the _Red Eric_: a berg close at hand supplies them with water; and thus, rich in all that they value,--sleep, and food, and drink, and companionship,--with their treasured short-lived summer sun above them, the _beau ideal_ and sum of Esquimaux blessings, they seem supremely happy.
"Whatever may have been the faults of these Esquimaux heretofore, stealing was the only grave one. Treachery they may have conceived; and I have reason to believe that, under superstitious fears of an evil influence from our presence, they would at one time have been glad to destroy us. But the day of all this has passed away. When trouble came to us and to them, and we bent ourselves to their habits,--when we looked to them to procure us fresh meat, and they found at our poor Oomiak-soak shelter and protection during their wild bear-hunts,--then we were so blended in our interests as well as modes of life, that every trace of enmity wore away. God knows that since they professed friendship--albeit the imaginary powers of the angekok-soak and the marvellous six-shooter which attested them may have had their influence--never have friends been more true. Although, since Ohlsen's death, numberless articles of inestimable value to them have been scattered upon the ice unwatched, they have not stolen a nail. It was only yesterday that Metek, upon my alluding to the manner in which property of all sorts was exposed without pilfering, explained through Petersen, in these two short sentences, the argument of their morality:--