THE ESQUIMAUX.
Every one has heard of the horrors of an Esquimaux existence,—sucking blubber instead of roast beef, train-oil their usual beverage, and a seal their bonne-bouche; the long gloomy winter spent in pestiferous hovels, lighted and warmed with whale-oil lamps; the narrow gallery for an entrance, along which the occupant creeps for ingress and egress. This and much more has been told us; yet, now that I have seen it all,—the Esquimaux's home, the Esquimaux's mode of living, and the Esquimaux himself,—I see nothing so horrible in one or the other.
The whaler, from bonnie Scotia, or busy Hull, fresh from the recollection of his land and home, no doubt shudders at the comparative misery and barbarity of these poor people; but those who have seen the degraded Bushmen or Hottentots of South Africa, the miserable Patanies of Malayia, the Fuegians or Australians of our southern hemisphere, and remember the comparative blessings afforded by nature to those melancholy specimens of the human family, will, I think, exclaim with me, that the Esquimaux of Greenland are as superior to them in mental capacity, manual dexterity, physical enterprise, and social virtues, as the Englishman is to the Esquimaux.
The strongest—indeed, I am assured, the only—symptom of the advantage of religious instruction perceptible in the Greenlander, over his North American brethren, is in the respect they show for the marriage tie, and strong affection for their children. The missionary, with this race, appears to have few difficulties to contend with: naturally gentle, and without any strong superstitious prejudices, they receive without resistance the simple creed of Reformed religion, which he has spread amongst them; and the poor Esquimaux child sends up its prayers and thanksgiving, in the words taught us by our Saviour, as earnestly and confidently as the educated offspring of Englishmen.
An old man, whom I pressed to accompany me as pilot to the Island of Disco, declined, under the plea that his wife was very ill, and that there was no one but himself to take care of the "piccaninny." Interested from such proper feeling in the man, Dr. P—— and I entered his winter abode, which he apologized for taking us to,—the illness of his "cara sposa" having prevented him changing his residence for the usual summer tent. Crawling on all fours through a narrow passage, on either side of which a dog-kennel and a cook-house had been constructed, we found ourselves in an apartment, the highest side of which faced us, the roof gradually sloping down to the ground.
The above section will give some idea of the place. Along one side of the abode a sort of bed-place extended for its whole length, forming evidently the family couch; for on one end of it, with her head close to a large seal-oil lamp, was the sick woman. She was at the usual Esquimaux female's employment of feeding the flame with a little stick from a supply of oil, which would not rise of its own accord up the coarse and ill-constructed wick; over the flame was a compound, which the sufferer told us was medicine for her complaint,—the rheumatism, a very prevalent one amongst these people. Leaving the kind Doctor to do the part of a good Samaritan, I amused myself with looking over the strange home into which I had got. The man took much pride in showing me his family,—consisting of a girl and three fine boys. His wife, he assured me, was only twenty-eight years of age: she looked at least six-and-thirty; and he likewise, though only thirty-four, had the appearance of being at least ten years older. They had married when she was twenty,—the usual age for marriage, as he told me. His daughter, rather a pretty and slight-made girl, was very busy making shoes for her brothers out of cured skin. I rewarded the youthful sempstress by giving her one of a number of dolls kindly sent me for the purpose by Mrs. W. of Woolwich; and could that kind friend have seen the joyful countenance of the Esquimaux child, she would indeed have been richly remunerated for her thoughtful little addition to my stock of presents. To finish my Esquimaux tale, I was next day not a little surprised at the father coming on board, and giving me a small pouch which his child had sewn for me in return for my present. This proved at least that Esquimaux children can appreciate kindness as well as others.
The Whale-Fish group consist of a congery of islets, of various shapes and sizes, with deep water channels between; the whole of granitic formation, with broad veins of quartz and masses of gneiss overlaying in various directions. Those I visited exhibited proof of constant and, I might say, rapid destruction from the action of water and frost. The southern and south-west sides of the larger islands were of, may be, 300 or 400 feet elevation, with a gradual dip to the north-east, as if their creation had been brought about by some submarine agency upheaving the primary rock, with an irregular force from the north-east.
The tallest cliffs were rent from crown to base, and frost-cracks intersected one another in such a perfect labyrinth, that the whole mass appeared as if merely hanging together from its stupendous weight. The narrow bays and bights with a southern aspect, where the concussion of a heavy sea had had its effect, were strewn with the wreck of the adjacent precipices, and progress for sportsmen along the shore, in pursuit of wild fowl, was extremely difficult. On the northern sides, these islands showed other features quite as peculiar to the glacial region upon which we were wandering: there the low projecting ledges of granite were polished by the constant attrition of oceanic ice and icebergs, until walking over them became barely possible.
June 18th, 1850.—I am much amused at the ease with which we assimilate ourselves to new climates and new habits. Yesterday, my friend Dr. P—— and I bathed within fifty yards of an iceberg, the water only two degrees above freezing point; candour must acknowledge that we did not stay long; and to-night, though no Highlander in love of hardship, I found myself at midnight in the water groping for lost gun-gear, an experiment which, having escaped from without rheumatism, I promise not to repeat. One of my crew slept last night on deck with his arm for a pillow, although the temperature was below freezing point, and every one complains of heat and throws aside jacket and cap when making the slightest exertion.