squimaux do their own.
Warm broth, dry bedding, and a comfortable cabin, did wonders
before evening, and our medical men gave me great hopes. As an
introduction to a system of cleanliness, and preparatory to
washing the sick, who were in a most filthy state, I scrubbed Shega
and her father from head to foot, and dressed them in new clothes.
During the night I persuaded both mother and child, who were very
restless, and constantly moaning, to take a few spoonfuls of soup.
On the morning of the 24th the woman appeared considerably
improved, and she both spoke and ate a little. As she was covered
with so thick a coating of dirt that it could be taken off in
scales, I obtained her assent to wash her face and hands a little
before noon. The man and his daughter now came to my table to look
at some things I had laid out to amuse them; and, after a few
minutes, Shega lifted up the curtain to look at her mother, when
she again let it fall, and tremblingly told us she was dead.

"The husband sighed heavily, the daughter burst into tears, and the
poor little infant made the moment more distressing by calling in a
plaintive tone on its mother, by whose side it was lying. I
determined on burying the woman on shore, and the husband was much
pleased at my promising that the body should be drawn on a sledge
by men instead of dogs; for, to our horror, Takkeelikkeeta had told
me that dogs had eaten part of Keimooseuk, and that, when he left
the huts with his wife, one was devouring the body as he passed it.

"Takkeelikkeeta now prepared to dress the dead body, and, in the
first place, stopped his nose with deer's hair and put on his
gloves, seeming unwilling that his naked hand should come in
contact with the corpse. I observed, in this occupation, his care
that every article of dress should be as carefully placed as when
his wife was living; and, having drawn the boots on the wrong legs,
he pulled them off again and put them properly. This ceremony
finished, the deceased was sewed up in a hammock, and, at the
husband's urgent request, her face was left uncovered. An officer
who was present at the time agreed with me in fancying that the
man, from his words and actions, intimated a wish that the living
child might be enclosed with its mother. We may have been mista