met with, nor do I know their reason for adopting this different mode of
construction.

Even if it were not the natural and happy disposition of these people to
be pleased, and to place implicit confidence wherever kind treatment is
experienced, that confidence would soon have been ensured by our
knowledge of their friends and relations to the southward, and the
information which we were enabled to give respecting their late and
intended movements. This, while it excited in them extreme surprise,
served also at once to remove all distrust or apprehension, so that we
soon found ourselves on the best terms imaginable. In return for all
this interesting information, they gave us the names of the different
portions of land in sight, many of which being recognised in their
countrymen's charts, we no longer entertained a doubt of our being near
the entrance of the strait to which all our hopes were directed. We now
found also that a point of land in sight, a few miles to the southward
of the tents, was near that marked _Ping-=it-k~a-l~ik_ on Ewerat's
chart, and that, therefore, the low shore along which we had been
constantly sailing the preceding night was certainly a part of the
continent.

By the time we had distributed most of our presents, and told some long
stories about Winter Island, to all which they listened with eager
delight and interest, we found the weather becoming so inclement as to
determine us to make the best of our way on board, and to take a more
favourable opportunity of renewing our visit to the Esquimaux. After
pulling out for an hour and a half, Captain Lyon, who had a boat's crew
composed of officers, and had, unfortunately, broken one of his oars,
was under the necessity of returning to the shore. My anxiety lest the
ships should be ventured too near the shore, from a desire to pick up