was their first attempt at the trade of shoemaker or tailor, yet they
contrived to cut out the articles which they required with as much
precision as if they had served a regular apprenticeship to the
business. The sinews of the reindeer and bears answered for thread.
They set earnestly to their work. For summer wear, they made a sort of
jacket and trousers of the prepared skins; for winter, long fur-gowns,
with hoods, made after the fashion of those worn by the Laplanders.

The constant employment which their necessities required, and the
various difficulties which they had to overcome by ingenious
contrivance, so far from having been a misfortune, may be considered
as having been the means of preserving these poor men from sinking
under their unhappy circumstances. But accordingly as their ingenuity
had supplied their wants, and their minds became more disengaged from
expedients, their melancholy increased, and they looked round
despondingly on the sterile and desolate region where, they felt, they
were to spend the rest of their days, far away from the hearths of
home, and from early friends and companions. Even the probability of
that little circle being lessened, and, it might be, reduced to one
solitary being, was a dreadful thought: each felt that this might be
his own fate. Then the fear of all means of sustenance failing, and
the assaults of wild beasts, were dangers too glaring to be forgotten.
Alexis Himkof, who had left a wife and three children, suffered
perhaps the most from heart-yearnings after home.

They had already lost one of their companions from the effects of
scurvy; and now, when six dreary years had nearly passed, another was
taken from among them. It chanced on the 15th of August 1749, while
they were lamenting their poor companion, that they descried a vessel.
Who can describe the tumults of their feelings, the fluttering of