Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/147

128 and the morning of September 3d found me quite ill, and confined to my fur bed inside the tupic. I felt no inclination to eat until the kind-hearted Tweroong came in, with her pretty china tea-saucer full of golden salmon, smoking hot. The very sight of it made me better. It was delicious, and seemed to fairly melt in my mouth. It did me much good, and I could not help thinking of my present situation as contrasted with that of other civilized men. There, alone, among a people termed "unenlightened, savages, and degraded beings"—away by myself in a newly-discovered region, that is, in a district previously untrodden by my own white race—confined by sickness within a shelter that scarcely protects from rain and wind—everything dripping wet—suffering from the pain of my body, and having no person to procure me what I might want, I am unexpectedly visited by a woman of the land, bearing in her hand a beautiful emblem of civilization filled with the most dainty dish—boiled salmon—fresh from the river I had just discovered. Truly woman—a good woman—is an angel wherever she is. The vision of Tweroong will long live in my memory. God bless the kind-hearted Innuit for her thoughtfulness, and her care of the white-man stranger in her own wonderful land. During the day Koojesse was using in his soup some pepper which I had brought with me as a condiment. Koomuk desired to taste it, and Koojesse at once gratified her wish. He sifted some into her open hand, and she immediately lapped it up in one dose. The next moment all the contortions, grimaces, jumping, and spitting that could be imagined followed. The woman seemed as if struck with sudden madness, and, when once more calm, declared that nothing should ever induce her to put such vile stuff in her mouth again. An hour later, Toolookaah, Koomuk's wing-a (husband), was served in a similar way. He came into the tent, and, seeing that something from my well-seasoned dish was still left, he desired to have it. What he thus coveted was merely salt and pepper, articles to him unknown. He, thinking it to be a delicacy of the white man's, licked it all up in quick time. The