them to perform hard duty for the small quantity of food they allow
them. Their portion upon a journey consists chiefly in offals, old
skins, entrails, rotten whale flesh, or fins, or whatever else the
Esquimaux himself cannot use; if these run out, or if the master,
whose stomach is not of the most delicate contexture, requires his
dogs' meat, then the poor creatures must go and seek for themselves,
in which case they will swallow almost any thing, so that it is always
necessary to secure the harness over night, if the traveller wishes to
proceed in the morning. The teams vary from three to nine dogs, and
this last number have been known to drag a weight of more than sixteen
hundred pounds, a mile in nine minutes.

Like the Greenlanders the inhabitants of Labrador must draw their
subsistence and their wealth chiefly from the sea; but in this respect
their circumstances are less favourable than the former. Whales are
scarce, and the chief species they take is that denominated the white
fish, of little value in commerce. In pursuing them they have now
adopted the European boat in preference to their own, and those most
frequently employed are six oared, rowed by twelve men. The harpooner
stands in the bow with his harpoon, or iron spear, which is stuck on a
shaft one or two fathoms long, and is provided with a leathern thong
of considerable length, to which are attached from five to ten
bladders of seal skin. If the whale be struck he immediately dives to
the bottom of the sea, where he remains till he is quite exhausted,
when he again comes to the surface of the water to breathe; in the
meanwhile the boat's crew observe all its motions, and are in
readiness with their lances to complete the business, during which,
the person who first struck the fish, falls down on his face in the
fore part of the boat, and prays that Torngak would strengthen the
thongs that they may not break; another of the crew allows his feet to