more value than millions of acres in the finest country of the world,
instead of a patch of barren ground on the bleak and inhospitable
coast of Labrador. When they mentioned that they meant to "buy" the
land, the whole crowd, who perfectly understood the term, cried out,
"Good! good! pay us, and take as much land as you please!" Drachart
said, "It is not enough that you be paid for your high rocky mountain;
you may perhaps say in your hearts, when these people come here, we
will kill them, and take their boats and all their valuable
articles." "No! no!" they exclaimed, "we will never kill any more, or
steal any more; we are brethren!" "That gladdens my heart," said
Drachart; "but how shall we buy the land? You have no great chief, and
every one of you will be lord of his land. We will do this: we will
give each of you what will be more useful to you in your fishing than
the land you may give us." "Pay us," they repeated, "pay us, and take
as much land as you please." Drachart and the other brethren then
going from tent to tent, divided among the men, women, and children,
all kinds of tools and fishing tackle, which having done, he produced
a written agreement to which all their names were attached, and
telling them its import, required each to put a mark before his name
with his own hand, that it might be a perpetual memorial of their
having sold the land. When they had done so, he again shewed each his
name with his mark, adding, "In time to come, when yourselves or your
children shall learn to read and write, as the Greenlanders have done,
they will be able to read these names, and they will remember what
they have just now seen and heard." Drachart next informed them, that
when they should return to Esquimaux Bay, after the rein-deer hunt,
they would see four great stones erected with figures on them, which
were called letters, and these would mark out the boundaries of the
land which had been bought from them. The Esquimaux, of whom about one
hundred were present, then gave the brethren their hands, and solemnly