Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/189

168 Husky, for Innuit; smoketute, for pipe, and many other words, are not Esquimaux, though in use among her people. "I now complete the tupic interview. Before I was aware of it, Tookoolito had the 'tea-kettle' over the friendly fire-lamp, and the water boiling. She asked me if I drank tea. Imagine my surprise at this, the question coming from an Esquimaux in an Esquimaux tent! I replied, 'I do; but you have not tea here, have you?' Drawing her hand from a little tin box, she displayed it full of fine-flavoured black tea, saying, 'Do you like your tea strong?' Thinking to spare her the use of much of this precious article away up here, far from the land of civilization, I replied, 'I'll take it weak, if you please.' A cup of hot tea was soon before me—capital tea, and capitally made. Taking from my pocket a sea-biscuit which I had brought from the vessel for my dinner, I shared it with my hostess. Seeing she had but one cup, I induced her to share with me its contents. There, amid the snows of the North, under an Esquimaux's hospitable tent, in company with Esquimaux, for the first time I shared with them in that soothing, cheering, invigorating emblem of civilization—T-E-A! Tookoolito says that she and her winga (husband) drink it nearly every night and morning. They acquired a taste for it in England, and have since obtained their annual supply from English and American whalers visiting Northumberland Inlet. "By-the-bye, Tookoolito said to me during the entertainment just described, 'I feel very sorry to say that many of the whaling people are very bad, making the Innuits bad too; they swear very much, and make our people swear. I wish they would not do so. Americans swear a great deal—more and worse than the English. I wish no one would swear. It is a very bad practice, I believe.'

"How think you, beloved Americans, I felt with these hot coals on my head? Oh that every swearing man, and every saint, could have seen and heard that Esquimaux woman as she spoke thus! I had just returned from a hard encounter with deep snow—falling snow, driven by almost a hurricane;