and betake themselves to seal-skin tents, some of which you
observe scattered here and there among the rocks. And now I've shown you
everything,--just in time, too, for here we are at the landing."

We had drawn in close to the end of a narrow pier, run out into the
water on slender piles, and, quickly ascending some steps, the Doctor
led the way up to his house. The whole settlement had turned out to meet
us, men, women, children, and dogs,--which latter, about two hundred in
number, "little dogs and all," set up an ear-splitting cry, wild and
strangely in keeping with every other part of the scene, and like
nothing so much as the dismal evening concert of a pack of wolves. The
children, on the other hand, kept quiet, and clung to their mothers, as
all children do in exciting times; the mothers grinned and laughed and
chattered, "as becomes the gentler sex" in the savage state; while the
men, all smoking short clay pipes, (one of their customs borrowed from
civilization,) looked on with that air of stolid indifference peculiar
to the male barbarian. They were mostly dressed in suits of seal-skins,
but some of them wore greasy Guernsey frocks and other European
clothing. Many of the women carried cunning-looking babies strapped upon
their backs in seal-skin pouches. The heads of men and women alike were
for the most part capless; but every one of the dark, beardless faces
was surmounted by a heavy mass of straight, uncombed, and tangled
jet-black hair. There were some half-breed girls standing in little
groups upon the rocks, who, adding something of taste to the simple need
of an artificial covering for the body, were attired in dresses, which,
although of the Esquimau fashion, were quite neatly ornamented. While
passing through this curious crowd, the eye could not but find pleasure
in the novel scene, the more especially as the delight of these
half-barbarous people was excited to the highest pitch by the strange
being who had come among them.

But if what the eye drank in gave delight, less fortunate the nose; for
from about the store-house and the native huts, and, indeed, from almost
everywhere, welled up that horrid odor of decomposing oil and fish and
flesh peculiar to a fishing-town. On this account, if on no other, I
was not sorry when we reached our destination.

"You like not this Greenland odor?" said my conductor. "Luckily it does
not reach me here, or I should seek a still higher perch to roost
on";--s