Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/55

34 into a whale-boat and went to sleep. On waking, he seemed quite thankful for the luxury of sleeping, though in the open air, his bed, for several days past, having been on the soft side of a boat, on the rocks of an island forty miles distant from Holsteinborg. He and his companion had been there engaged in hunting ducks, &c. when they discovered the George Henry. They were very ragged, and Captain B presented each with some new garments, which made them truly thankful. Some of the articles were new pants, and each man immediately put on a pair. Sampson's was a fair fit—that is to say, they were tight as a drum upon him; but Ephraim's! the waist would not meet within six inches. This, however, was all the same to him. He drew a long—very long breath; so long, indeed, that I could not but think him like a whale, breathing once in ten minutes, or, if occasion required it, once in an hour! Then, following this, Ephraim ceased for a moment to breathe at all, while he nimbly plied his fingers, and rapidly filled each button-hole with its respective button. Pants were now on and completely adjusted—buttoned! but as every living thing must have air or die, and as whales, when coming up to breathe, make the regions round about ring with the force with which they respire and inspire, so even an Esquimaux has to take in fresh draughts of oxygen, or he ceases to exist. Now Ephraim had, in buttoning his pants, suspended respiration for some longer time than nature was capable of sustaining. Accordingly, Nature resumed her functions, and, in the act of giving a full respiration, Ephraim's pants burst, the buttons flying all over the deck! Civilization buttons and New London-made pants could not stand against the sudden distention of an Esquimaux's bowels after being once so unnaturally contracted. Here the saying of old Horace would be useful: Naturam expelles furca tamen usque recurret—You may turn Nature out of doors with violence, but she will return; and he might have continued—though the violence be an Esquimaux's bowels much contracted by a pair of New London-made pants of the nineteenth century!

I will now again quote from my Journal: