One of the women who came to the ship had a little girl about four
years old, and she said she would give us that girl, if we would let
her have a tin pan which she saw.

These Indians tie their children on their backs, when they have to
walk a great way. They licked the oil on the outside of our lamps,
just as a dog or a cat would have done. Oh, what dirty people! They
eat their meat raw. We killed a seal one day, and our captain gave it
to one of the young women. She took it, and bit it into pieces with
her teeth. Then she passed it round to the rest of the Indians, and
they all helped eat it.

[Illustration]




THE WHITE BEARS.


There are a great many white bears in that country. Sometimes you can
see two or three of them sitting on one of these ice-hills. How they
ever got there, I am sure I cannot tell. I guess they went out on the
ice only a little way from the shore, to get something which they saw
was good to eat; and while they were on the ice, it started off, and
they could not get to the shore again.

One of the men who sailed in the same ship with me, told me a story
about a white bear, which made me laugh for an hour after I heard it.
He said he was in a small boat with another sailor once, about a mile