Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/71

50 and he paid for it by a Greenland bill of twenty-four skillings, equal to fourteen cents American.

We next visited the blacksmith's shop—a building that looks quite equal to a fine village dwelling-house. Inside was the machine-shop, with long rows of whale gear, harpoons, lances, &c. and three whale guns. Here I saw a cast-iron stove, which the governor said was the kind used by the natives. This stove was filed all over and polished; the stove-pipe, twenty feet long, also of cast iron. Its price was equivalent to $15 Federal money. The blacksmith was a fine-looking, intelligent mechanic. Our next visit was to the school-house. To enter it we had to stoop much. "He stoops to conquer," was an idea that entered my mind as I thought of the teacher who bends his head on entering that temple of knowledge. The teacher's business is to bend. "As the twig is bent, the tree's inclined." Intelligence and virtue will yet conquer ignorance and vice. Who would not stoop that such a cause—the cause of knowledge—might progress?

On returning to the governor's house, we went into an upper room which overlooks Davis's Straits and the many islands around the entrance of the harbour. Here is the "apothecary's shop," the contents of which the governor himself dispenses as required among the sick natives. Shelves of stationery were also round the room; and in a closet a quantity of eider-down, from which, in 1850, both Dr. Kane and Commodore De Haven had some for their beds. The keys of the government buildings—many of ponderous size—were also kept in a closet here.

After examining the several places of note, we sat down to an excellent supper of duck, salmon, trout, eider-duck's eggs, butter, American cheese, some very rich goat's milk, white flour bread, Yankee-brewed rye liquors, and good tea. A Danish custom of shaking hands on rising from table followed. We then went out for a walk, and to call on the lieutenant governor. This gentleman was very kind and urbane in his demeanor. He brought forth numerous