e removed at once, and when each
individual must undoubtedly perform a full share of the general labour.
The women are, however, good walkers and not easily fatigued; for we
have several times known a young woman of two-and-twenty, with a child
in her hood, walk twelve miles to the ships and back again the same day,
for the sake of a little bread-dust and a tin canister. When stationary
in the winter, they have really almost a sinecure of it, sitting quietly
in their huts, and having little or no employment for the greater part
of the day. In short, there are few, if any people, in this state of
society among whom the women are so well off. They always sit upon the
beds with their legs doubled under them, and are uneasy in the posture
usual with us. The men sometimes sit as we do, but more generally with
their legs crossed before them.

The women do not appear to be, in general, very prolific. Illumea indeed
had borne seven children, but no second instance of an equal number in
one family afterward came to our knowledge; three or four is about the
usual number. They are, according to their own account, in the habit of
suckling their children to the age of three years; but we have seen a
child of five occasionally at the breast, though they are dismissed from
the mother's hood at about the former age. It is not uncommon to see one
woman suckling the child of another, while the latter happens to be
employed in her other domestic occupations. They are in the habit, also,
of feeding their younger children from their own mouths, softening the
food by mastication, and then turning their heads round so that the
infant in the hood may put its lips to theirs. The chill is taken from
water for them in the same manner, and some fathers are very fond of
taking their children on their knees and thus feeding them. The women
are more desirous of having sons than daughters, as on the former must
principally depend their support in old age.

Twelve of the men had each two wives, and some of the younger ones had
also two betrothed; two instances occurred of the father and son being
married to sisters. The custom of betrothing children in their infancy
is commonly practised here, in which respect these people differ from
the natives of Greenland, where it is comparatively rare. A daughter of
Arnaneelia, between two and three years old, had long been thus
contracted to Okotook's son, a hero of six or seven, and the latter used
to run abou