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. A party of our sailors once, on landing, took some sticks
from a large heap, and uncovered the nest of a snow-bunting with
young, the bird flew to a little distance, but seeing that the men
sat down, and harmed her not, continued to seek food and supply her
little ones, with full faith in the good intentions of the party.
Captain Lyon found a child's grave partly uncovered, and a snow-
bunting had built its nest upon the infant's bosom.
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