evermore." Still, on the succeeding day, the weather not abating, the
party were detained at the station, which the increasing scarcity of
food rendered now doubly uncomfortable; the brethren were obliged to
be on the watch whenever they eat, lest the Esquimaux should snatch
the scanty morsel from them, which now consisted of only one meal a
day. "One can hardly conceive," say they in their journal, "what we
endured: we had no rest neither night nor day; when we lay down to
sleep and gat warm, we were almost devoured with vermin; when we sat
up during the day, we were almost suffocated with stench and smoke."

At length a sledge, which had been sent off to the whale, returned
laden with fat and flesh, which afforded relief from the pressure of
hunger, "and made," say the missionaries, "all our hearts leap for
joy;" and on the succeeding day, the whole party set off for the
whale. When they reached it they found it of the middling size, about
sixty-four feet long, but covered with ice and snow almost a fathom
deep. The Esquimaux, however, crept into the mouth and cut off what
they wanted from the interior to supply themselves; but the wants of
the brethren were only increased, they could make little use of such
flesh, and they were without wood to dress it, had it been even more
palatable. They had no shelter but a snow-house, which they
constructed with the help of the Esquimaux. The women, however, had
forgotten their lamps, and the brethren had no resource for rendering
their habitation comfortable, but to construct a kind of temporary
lamp from a piece of whale's flesh, into which they cut a hole and put
a piece of moss, and then to kindle it, but the smoke and disagreeable
smell were insupportable; they also suffered greatly from the want of
water, as they could get nothing to drink but ice or snow melted,
which was done in a manner that in other circumstances would have
proved an absolute prohibition against tasting it--the Esquimaux