To judge by their appearance, and what is, perhaps, a better criterion, the number of their children, there could be little doubt that the means of subsistence which they possess are very abundant; but of this we had more direct proof by the quantity of seahorses and seals which we found concealed under stones along the shore of the north branch, as well as on Observation Island. Mr. Fife reported that, in sounding the north branch, he met with their winter huts above two miles above the tents on the same shore, and that they were partly excavated from a bank facing the sea, and the rest built round with stones.
We saw no appearance of disease among the seventeen persons who inhabited the tents, except that the eyes of the old couple were rather blear, and a very young infant looked pale and sickly. The old man had a large scar on one side of his head, which he explained to us very clearly to be a wound he had received from a _nennook_ (bear). Upon the whole, these people may be considered in possession of every necessary of life, as well as of most of the comforts and conveniences which can be enjoyed in so rude a state of society. In the situation and circumstances in which the Esquimaux of North Greenland are placed, there is much to excite compassion for the low state to which human nature appears to be there reduced; a state in few respects superior to that of the bear or the seal which they kill for their subsistence. But, with these, it was impossible not to experience a feeling of a more pleasing kind: there was a respectful decency in their general behaviour, which at once struck us as very different from that of the other untutored Esquimaux, and in their persons there was less of that intolerable filth by which these people are so generally distinguished. But the superiority for which they are the most remarkable is, the perfect honesty which characterized all their dealings with us. During the two hours that the men were on board, and for four or five hours that we were subsequently among them on shore (on both which occasions the temptation to steal from us was perhaps stronger than we can well imagine, and the opportunity of doing so by no means wanting), not a single instance occurred, to my knowledge, of their pilfering the most trifling article. It is pleasing to record a fact no less singular in itself than honourable to these simple people.