Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/149

 great usefulness. Indeed, everybody in the vessel seems desirous of adding to my collections; but this zeal has to-day led me into a rather unpleasant embarrassment. Jensen, whose long residence among the Esquimaux of Southern Greenland has brought him to look upon that people as little better than the dogs which drag their sledges, discovered a couple of graves and brought away the two skin-robed mummies which they enclosed, thinking they would make fine museum specimens; and in this surmise he was quite right; but, unfortunately for the museum, Mrs. Hans was prowling about when Jensen arrived on board, and, recognizing one of them by some article of its fur clothing as a relative, she made a terrible ado, and could not be quieted even by Jensen's assurance that I was a magician, and would restore them to life when in my own country; so, when I learned the circumstances, I thought it right, in respect to humanity if not to science, to restore them to their stony graves, and had it done accordingly.

The Esquimau graves appear to be numerous about the harbor, giving evidence of quite an extensive settlement at no very remote period. These graves are merely piles of stones arranged without respect to direction, and in the size of the pile and its location nothing has been consulted but the convenience of the living. The bodies are sometimes barely hidden. Tombs of the dead, they are, too, the mournful evidences of a fast dwindling race.

October 18th.

I have been well repaid for my course in re-interring the mummies; for I have won the gratitude of my Esquimau people, and Hans has brought me in their