Page:Works of Jules Verne - Parke - Vol 2.djvu/290



, Dr. Clawbonny, and Johnson, accompanied by Foker and Strong, the cook, got into the whaling-boat, and went on shore.

The Governor, with his wife and five children, came courteously to meet their visitors. Dr. Clawbonny knew enough Danish to establish friendly relations between them, and Foker, the ice-master, who was also interpreter, knew about twenty words of the Esquimaux tongue, and a good deal can be done with twenty words if one is not very ambitious.

The Governor was born in Isle Disko, and had never been out of it in his life. He did the honors of his town, composed of three wooden houses for himself and the three Lutheran ministers, a school, and a few shops, which were stocked by shipwrecked vessels. The rest of the town consisted of snow-huts, with one single opening, into which the Esquimaux crawled on all-fours.

A great part of the inhabitants had gone out to meet the Forward, and more than one advanced as far as the middle of the bay in his kayak.

The Doctor knew that the word esquimaux means eater of raw fish, but he also knew that this name is considered an insult by the natives; and he therefore took care to call them "Greenlanders."

And yet their oily sealskin clothes and boots, and the greasy, foetid smell of both men and women—for one sex is hardly distinguishable from the other—told plainly enough the description of food on which they lived, as well as the disease of leprosy which prevailed to some extent among them, as it does among most ichthyophagous races, though it did not affect their health.

The Lutheran clergyman and his wife, with whom the Doctor was anticipating some pleasant intercourse, were on a visitation in the south, below Upernavik, so he was obliged to make the best of the Governor. This worthy functionary was not very lettered; a little less intelligence would have made him an ass; a little more, and he would have known how to read.

The Doctor also wished to make a personal inspection of an Esquimaux hut, but, fortunately for him, the entrance