Page:The open Polar Sea- a narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States" (IA openpolarseanarr1867haye).pdf/300

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they rolled over among the reindeer skins of Tcheitchenguak's hut and slept.

Next morning I had Kalutunah brought to my cabin, thinking to treat him with that distinguished consideration due to his exalted rank. But caution was necessary. For a stool I gave him a keg, and I was particularly careful that his person should not come in contact with any thing else, for under the ample furs of this renowned chief there were roaming great droves of creeping things, for which no learned lexicographer has yet invented a polite name, and so I cannot further describe them. Nor can I adequately describe the man himself, as he sat upon the keg, his body hidden in a huge fur coat, with its great hood, and his legs and feet inserted in long-haired bear-skin,—the whole costume differing little from the hitherto described dress of the dark-faced Tcheitchenguak. He was a study for a painter. No child could have exhibited more unbounded delight, had all the toys of Nuremberg been tumbled into one heap before him. To picture his face with any thing short of a skillful brush were an impossible task. It was not comely like that of "Villiers with the flaxen hair," nor yet handsome like that of the warrior chief Nireus, whom Homer celebrates as the handsomest man in the whole Greek army, (and never mentions afterwards,) nor was it like Ossian's chief, "the changes of whose face were as various as the shadows which fly over the field of grass;" but it was bathed in the sunshine of a broad grin. Altogether it was quite characteristic of his race, although expressing a much higher type of manhood than usual. The features differed only in degree from those of Tcheitchenguak, heretofore described; the skin was less dark, the face