Fox Sailed From London In The Same Year In Which James Sailed From Bristol.

They were rivals.

Meeting in Davis Straits, Fox dined on board his friendly rival's vessel, which was very unfit for the service upon which it went. The sea washed over them and came into the cabin, so says Fox, "sauce would not have been wanted if there had been roast mutton." Luke Fox, being ice-bound and in peril, writes, "God thinks upon our imprisonment within a supersedeas;" but he was a good and honourable man as wall as euphuist. His "Sir Thomas Rowe's Welcome" leads into Fox Channel: our "Phantom Ship" is pushing through the welcome passes on the left-hand Repulse Bay. This portion of the Arctic regions, with Fox Channel, is extremely perilous. Here Captain Lyon, in the Griper, was thrown anchorless upon the mercy of a stormy sea, ice crashing around him. One island in Fox Channel is called Mill Island, from the incessant grinding of great masses of ice collected there. In the northern part of Fox Channel, on the western shore, is Melville Peninsula, where Parry wintered on his second voyage. Here let us go ashore and see a little colony of Esquimaux.

Their limits are built of blocks of snow, and arched, having an ice pane for a window. They construct their arched entrance and their hemispherical roof on the true principles of architecture. Those wise men, the Egyptians, made their arch by hewing the stones out of shape; the Esquimaux have the true secret. Here they are, with little food in winter and great appetites; devouring a whole walrus when they get it, and taking the chance of hunger for the next eight days - hungry or full, for ever happy in their lot - here are the Esquimaux. They are warmly clothed, each in a double suit of skins sewn neatly together. Some are singing, with good voices too. Please them, and they straightway dance; activity is good in a cold climate: Play to them on the flute, or if you can sing well, sing, or turn a barrel-organ, they are mute, eager with wonder and delight; their love of music is intense. Give them a pencil, and, like children, they will draw. Teach them and they will learn, oblige them and they will be grateful. "Gentle and loving savages," one of our old worthies called them, and the Portuguese were so much impressed with their teachable and gentle conduct, that a Venetian ambassador writes, "His serene majesty contemplates deriving great advantage from the country, not only on account of the timber of which he has occasion, but of the inhabitants, who are admirably calculated for labour, and are the best I have ever seen." The Esquimaux, of course, will learn vice, and in the region visited by whale ships, vice enough has certainly been taught him. Here are the dogs, who will eat old coats, or anything; and, near the dwellings, here is a snow-bunting - robin redbreast of the Arctic lands.

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