Dr. Hayes asked him if he would accompany the expedition.
“Yes.”
Would he take his wife and baby?
“Yes.”
Would he go without them?
“Yes.”
This last answer reveals the curious unimpressionableness of the Eskimo, who endures with calmness, nay, even with indifference, those partings which try the heartstrings of the European. It is, perhaps, a result of the constant warfare he maintains against an uncongenial and austere Nature that he comes to regard himself as his first and chief, as almost his only concern. So long as his wife and children surround him, he shows no evident want of affection; but he has no objection to part from them, if the separation will prove to his individual interest.
As Dr. Hayes had no leisure to examine critically into the state of his mind, and as he cherished a conviction that the permanent separation of husband and wife was to be regarded as a painful event, he determined on giving the Eskimo mother the benefit of this conventional suspicion. Both husband and wife, therefore, were carried on board the schooner, as well as their baby, their tent, and all their household goods. The bright-eyed boy and the ancient dame cried to accompany them; but Dr. Hayes had no further room, and was compelled to leave them to the care of their tribe, who, about twenty in number, had discovered the schooner, and with a merry shout had come across the hill. After bestowing upon them some useful gifts, Dr. Hayes returned to his vessel.
He adds that Hans was the only unconcerned person in the party. At a later period the thought crossed his commander’s mind that he would by no means have been displeased had wife and child been left to the charity of their savage kin: while Dr. Hayes had abundant reason, during the course of the expedition, to wish that he had left the selfish and indolent Eskimo to linger in his seal-skin tent among the hills and rocks of Cape York.