eatures by long experience, and also know
the best way to capture some of them; but a very little communication
with natives enables the European to learn the secret; and he soon far
excels his simple instructors in the art, being aided by vastly
superior reasoning faculties, and also by incomparably better
appliances for the chase. Firearms for shooting beasts and birds, and
seines for catching fish, render the Esquimaux spears, and arrows, and
traps mere children's toys in comparison. Moreover, a ship is never
frozen up many weeks, before some wandering tribe is sure to visit it;
and all navigators have found the natives a mild, friendly, grateful
people, with fewer vices than almost any other savages in the World.
They will thankfully barter as many salmon as will feed a ship's crew
one day for a file or two, or needles, or a tin-canister, or piece of
old iron-hoop, or any trifling article of hardware; and so long as the
vessel remains, they and other tribes of their kindred will frequently
visit it, and bring animals and fish to barter for what is literally
almost valueless to European adventurers.

An important consideration, is the _variety_ of food obtainable in the
arctic regions. We need not particularly classify the creatures found
in the two seasons of summer and winter, but may enumerate the
principal together. Of animals fit for food are musk-oxen, bears,
reindeer, hares, foxes, &c. Of fish, there is considerable variety,
salmon and trout being the chief and never-failing supply. Of birds,
there are ducks, geese, cranes, ptarmigan, grouse, plovers,
partridges, sand-larks, shear-waters, gannets, gulls, mollemokes,
dovekies, and a score of other species. We personally know that the
flesh of bears, reindeer, and some of the other animals, is most
excellent: we have partaken of them with hearty relish. As to foxes,
Ross informs us that, although his men did not like them at first,
they eventually preferred fox-flesh to any other meat! And as to such
birds as gannets and shear-waters, which are generally condemned as
unpalatable, on account of their fishy taste, we would observe that
the rancid flavour exists only in the fat. Separate it, and, as we
ourselves can testify, the flesh of these birds is little inferior to
that of the domestic pigeon, when either boiled or roasted. The
majority of the creatures named may be captured in considerable
numbers, in their several seasons, with only ordinary skill. But
nec