composure, but with a decision of manner peculiar to herself, took hold of his arm to engage his attention, and then looking him steadfastly in the face, accused him of not having faithfully executed her commission to me.  The mistake was thus instantly explained, and I thanked Iligliuk for her canoe; but it is impossible for me to describe the quiet, yet proud satisfaction displayed in her countenance at having thus cleared herself from the imputation of a breach of promise.

There being among the presents with which we were supplied a number of pikes, we presented two or three of these from each ship to the most deserving of the Esquimaux, to serve as staves for their spears; and valuable ones they proved to them.  Upon each pike were marked, by small nails driven into the wood, the words “Fury and Hecla, 1822.”

Almost the whole of these people were now affected with violent colds and coughs, occasioned by a considerable thawing that had lately taken place in their huts, so as to wet their clothes and bedding; though we had, as yet, experienced no great increase of temperature.  From the nature of their habitations, however, their comfort was greater, and their chance of health better, when the cold was more severe.  On this account, they began to make fresh alterations in these curious dwelling-places, either by building the former apartments two or three feet higher, or adding others, that they might be less crowded.  In building a higher hut, they constructed it over, and, as it were, concentric with the old one, which is then removed from within.  It is curious to consider that, in all these alterations, the object kept in view was coolness, and this in houses formed of snow!

Some of them had caught a wolf in their trap; but we found that nothing less than extreme want could have induced them to eat the flesh of that which we had given them, as, now that they had other food, they would not touch it.  Only four wolves at this time remained alive of the original pack, and these were constantly prowling about near the ships or the village.

The month of February closed with the thermometer at -32 deg., and, though the sun had now attained a meridian altitude of nearly sixteen degrees, and enlivened us with his presence above the horizon for ten hours in the day, no sensible effect had yet been produced on the average temperature of the atmosphere.  The uniformly white surface of the snow, on which, at this season, the sun’s rays have to act, or, rather, leaving them nothing to act upon, is much against the first efforts to produce a thaw; but our former experience of the astonishing rapidity with which this operation is carried on, when once the ground begins to be laid bare, served in some measure to reconcile us to what appeared a protraction of the cold of winter not to have been expected in our present latitude.

CHAPTER VIII.