ound on the beach, and, leading
him home, taught him several letters of the alphabet and then baked him
a cake. This system of rewarding attendance with something to eat
rapidly brought other scholars. Older visitors followed, and he soon
had a school in active operation and then a lecture-room.

Prior to Dr. Driggs's arrival, the experiences which the natives had
had with the whites had not been universally satisfactory. Outside of
rare meetings with the officers and crews of the government's revenue
cutters, their white acquaintances had been pretty much confined to the
class known as "beach-combers," or deserters from the steam-whaling
fleet. These are described as a rough, unscrupulous set of fellows, too
worthless to obtain better employment in San Francisco, where they are
enlisted. Some of these undesirable visitors had already appeared at
Point Hope and had outrageously abused the peaceful inhabitants before
our author's arrival there.

In contrast with such men as these, Dr. Driggs proved himself a friend
indeed to the poor natives, and succeeded in due time in winning the
affection and confidence of their entire tribe. Little by little he
mastered their language, until he has become so proficient in it that
he is now planning to write a grammar.

During the summer months many of the Point Hope natives are away from
home for long intervals in quest of game or on fishing expeditions, and
the doctor would frequently follow their example, making long
excursions along the coast, as far north as Icy Cape, if not further;
and southward, along the shores of Kotzebue Sound. Similarly for many
winters, wearied with confinement to the house during the long night,
he was wont to set out, accompanied by some native guide and wife with
dog-team and sledge, to make trips of several hundred miles over ice
and snow, exposed to blizzards such as we have no conception of,
camping out when weary in an improvised snow-house, or sleeping,
perhaps, in some native settlement, where the only fare would be
uninviting frozen fish. These last excursions, however, he has been
obliged to discontinue in consequence of having frozen one of his feet,
several years since, when he fell from an ice floe into the ocean, and
was with difficulty dragged out by his companions.

And right here it might be as well to observe that the pretty picture
which childhood's memories depict as adorning a page in our Physical
Geography, with its fur-clad tr