Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/67

46 and said, "How much you sell for this?" Smith took the bill with avidity, and showed it to our acute, jocular, and ever good humoured Sterry. I here show a fac-simile of it to my readers. Sterry, seeing the "sex skilling" on the bill, thought it to be six shillings Yankee currency, and accordingly himself addressed the Esquimaux in native tongue. "How many plugs for this?" said he. "Four," answered Sampson. Now this, if each understood the other, would have been clear, straightforward, and a bargain. But Sterry, though well talking Esquimaux on the west side of Davis's Straits, was not so proficient in it at Greenland, where there is a material difference. Accordingly, Sampson's reply he took to mean four pounds of tobacco, which amounted to thirty-two plugs. This, even at the "six shillings" Yankee currency, was a pretty "steep price," for the tobacco was worth at least one dollar and sixty-eight cents. However, for certain reasons connected with an extreme thirst then raging throughout both Sterry and Smith, it was concluded to let the tobacco go that the money might be had. Smith, therefore, went to his chest and got what Sampson wanted. As the plugs of tobacco were counted over to the Esquimaux, his eyes expanded with immense delight and astonishment. He hastened to his kyack with the "godsend," and hurried to the shore, the richest native man in Holsteinborg. Immediately he communicated to his friends the immense wealth that had befallen him from his "sex skillings;" how he had asked only four plugs of tobacco from the white man on board the ship, and he had got eightfold. It was enough. What California was to Americans, so was the barque George Henry now to the Esquimaux of Holsteinborg. Kyack after kyack came with its dignified Esquimaux, each loaded with a large complement of the fortune-making "sex skilling." Sampson, who had so quickly got rich, was among the newcomers, eagerly seeking for more. But, alas for the hopes of men, especially when founded on bank-bills! A speculation had already commenced in town on the "skilling notes." They ran up above par to 300, 400, and, at one time, 800 per