Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/125

104 with her son (the daughter not arriving till next day), hastened to the ship. Sorrowfully, and with tears in her eyes, did the poor Esquimaux widow, Kok-er-jab-in, enter our cabin. As she looked at us, and then at the chest where Kudlago had kept his things, and which Captain Budington now opened, the tears flowed faster and faster, showing that Nature is as much susceptible of all the softer feelings among these children of the North as with us in the warmer South. But her grief could hardly be controlled when the treasures Kudlago had gathered in the States for her and his little girl were exhibited. She sat herself down upon the chest, and pensively bent her head in deep, unfeigned sorrow; then, after a time, she left the cabin with her son.

The following day I again went on shore for an excursion up the mountains, "Captain," a lad about fifteen years of age, accompanying me. My dogs had been landed immediately upon our arrival, and now greeted me with much joy. Poor creatures, how they liked once more to bury their shaggy, panting bodies beneath the snow! They skip, they run, they come and look, as if grateful, in my eye, and then bound away again in the wildest exuberance of animal spirits.

I have before mentioned some particulars of these dogs, and I now relate an anecdote concerning them during our passage across from Greenland.

One day, in feeding the dogs, I called the whole of them around me, and gave to each in turn a capelin, or small dried fish. To do this fairly, I used to make all the dogs encircle me until every one had received ten of the capelins apiece. Now Barbekark, a very young and shrewd dog, took it into his head that he would play a white man's trick. So, every time he received his fish, he would back square out, move a distance of two or three dogs, and force himself in line again, thus receiving double the share of any other dog. But this joke of Barbekark's bespoke too much of the game many men play upon their fellow-beings, and, as I noticed it, I determined to check his doggish propensities; still, the cunning, and the singular way in which he evidently watched