Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/377

Rh and the banks of Richardson River, to which they resort every summer to kill reindeer. When asked if their river did not, like the Coppermine, abound in fish, they said they had no nets, and indeed appeared poor enough; yet, for each article we gave them, they immediately offered something in return, which was generally declined.

On being questioned, Awallook told us that he had heard there were Esquimaux far west who wore labrets, but that he had never seen any himself; that he had never heard of Great Bear Lake; that none of his tribe had been killed by Indians in his time, but that he had been told by his father of the massacre at the Bloody Fall. He soon remarked, from their darker complexions, that two of my companions, Hope and Larocque, were Indians; and the slender, agile figure of the latter was strikingly contrasted with the square, rugged forms of these natives of the sea. It seemed as if, on the northern confines of a new continent, I had together before me descendants of the nomadic Tartar and the sea-roving Scandinavian, two of the most dissimilar and widely separate races of the ancient world. A goose happening to fly past, I thoughtlessly fired, and the bird fell splash into the river; at the same moment that the Esquimaux—the two younger