Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/242

Rh finding her whom I sought. It is a custom quite prevalent with the Innuits to line their snow-houses with sealskins, or such sail-cloth as they occasionally obtain from the whalers, for the object of shedding the droppings from the melting dome of the igloo, which follow when a large fire-light is kept burning, or when the weather becomes very moderate. "This igloo I found to be lined with both sealskins and sail-cloth sewed together. With the knife I made an opening through this material. Throwing back its folds, and peering down into the interior, I there beheld her whom my soul aspired to help and to save. But she moved not, she answered not to my call. Could she be slumbering so soundly, so sweetly, that the ordinary tone of the human voice could not arouse her! There she was, her face turned to the wall at her right, reclining in her couch, fully enveloped in bed-covering. Enlarging the opening I had already made for the purpose of descending into this igloo, I called first to my Innuit friend to come near me. With cautious steps he approached. I told him the discovery I had made, and that I wished him to assist me as I descended, and to remain by while I determined whether the woman breathed or not. As the opening was directly over the ikkumer, I had considerable difficulty in getting down into the igloo, but at last I was within. In breathless silence I approached the object before me. I unmittened my right hand, and placed it on her forehead. It was frosted marble! She is dead! she is dead! were my uttered words to my friend, who stood on the snow roof looking down, and watching intently for the momentous result. Her whom we thought to rescue, God Himself had rescued. He found her here, lonely and hopeless, imprisoned in a clay tabernacle, and this entombed in ice walls and snow—deserted, abandoned by her people, when at His bidding an angel with white wing—whiter than the pure, radiant, snow around—took the jewel from its broken casket, and bore it away to its home. "'Is she not better off now than when in this sinful world?' asked my weeping heart, as I looked upon the