d to be enjoying excellent
health. It is probable that their certain supplies of food, and the
nomade kind of life they lead in its pursuit during that season,
are favourable to health. Nutrition goes on actively, and an
astonishing increase of strength and fulness is acquired. Active
diseases might now be looked for, but that the powers of nature are
providentially exerted with effect.

"The unlimited use of stimulating animal food, on which they are
from infancy fed, induces at an early age a highly plethoric state
of the vascular system. The weaker, over-distended vessels of the
nose quickly yield to the increased impetus of the blood, and an
active hemorrhage relieves the subject. As the same causes continue
to be applied in excess at frequent intervals, and are followed by
similar effects, a kind of vicarious hemorrhage at length becomes
established by habit; superseding the intervention of art, and
having no small share in maintaining a balance in the circulating
system. The phenomenon is too constant to have escaped the
observation of those who have visited the different Esquimaux
people; a party of them has, indeed, rarely been seen, that did not
exhibit two or three instances of the fact.

"About the month of September, the approach of winter induced the
Esquimaux at Igloolik to abandon their tents and to retire into
their more established village. The majority were here crowded into
huts of a permanent construction, the materials composing the sides
being stones and the bones of whales, and the roofs being formed of
skins, turf, and snow; the rest of the people were lodged in snow
huts. For a while they continued very healthy; in fact, as long as
the temperature of the interior did not exceed the freezing point,
the vapours of the atmosphere congealed upon the walls, and the
air remained dry and tolerably pure; besides, their hard-frozen
winter stock of walrus did not at this time tempt them to indulge
their appetites immoderately. In January the temperature suffered
an unseasonable rise; some successful captures of walrus also took
place; and these circumstances, combined perhaps with some
superstitious customs of which we were ignorant, seemed the signal
for giving way to sensuality. The lamps were accumulated, and the
kettles mor