Page 7

[verso]

8

I can already count eight settlements including
about one hundred and forty souls. There are more perhaps;
but certainly I here state the majority of
the population, out of these I can number
five deaths since our arrival, and I am aware
of hardships and disasters encountered by the survivors, which [?] as they must
be in the [?] cannot fail to resolve a [large?] mortality.
[Both] crime combines with the [contingencies
of] disease and exposure [operate] to their their
numbers. I know of three murders within the past two years [by [?]
narration from the relatives of the murdered]
and one infanticide (Awahtok child) occurred
only a few months ago.

These facts which [involve only such as] are open to my limited
sources of information must [?] of course
a much smaller mortality than the fact. [The actual results]
They confirm however a fearful conclusion which these poor wretches
have themselves communicated to us, that they
are dying out -: not lingeringly like the American
tribes but so rapidly as to be able to
mask within a generation their progress
towards extinction.

Nothing can be more saddening measured by our own [?] than such a
conviction, [at least as it would be to [?] a]
but it seems to have no effect upon
this remarkable people. Surrounded by the
graves of their dead, by huts [?]
yet still recent in their memory as homesteads,
even by caches of meat which, frozen under
the snow by the dead of one year, are eaten
by the living of the next; they show neither
apprehension nor regret. Even [Kalutaneh?]
a man of fine instincts and I think of
heart, will retain his stolid face of apathy of [blank] by the aid of [?]
extinction. He will smile in his efforts to count
the years which must obliterate his nation,
and break in with a laugh as his children
shout out their ["Amna Ayia"?] and dance
to the taps of his drum.

[recto]

9

How wonderful is all this! rude as are their ideas
of numbers, there are those among this merry hearted peoples who can [thus]
measure look forward to the fate of their last man.

[In return to my record of news] When
Netelik now the receptacle of these half starved
fugitives was obliged itself to capitulate with famine
the body corporate determined, as
on like occasions it had often done before, to
migrate to the seats of the more Northern hunt.
The movements of the walrus and the condition
of the ice seem to be known to them by a kind
of instinct: so when the light came, they harnessed
in their reserve of dogs and started
for Cape Alexander.

It could not one would suppose have been a very cheerful migration,
women, babies, and young children trusting
themselves into a frozen wilderness at
constant temperatures before -30° and sometimes
verging upon -60°. But Hans with a laugh
which seemed to indicate some exquisite point
[?] concealed appreciation of the [ludicrous?] said
they travelled gradually in squads, singing
Amna Ayia and when they reached any of
the [halting huts?] eat the blubber and liver of
the owners and danced all night! So, at
last, they reached [Utaksoak?] "The great Cauldron" well known as Cape Alexander, and settled
at a spot called Peteravek or the wellcome halt. [Whither I
have seat to negotiate as before, mentioned].

At first game was scarce there; but the season
was [closer?] at hand when the female walrus is tending her calf; and
except the exposure of long jaunts upon the
ice, there was then no drawback to the success of
the chase. They are desperately merry and
seem to have forgotten that a second winter
in ahead of them. Hans said, with another
of his quiet laughs, one half of them are
sick, and cant hunt these do nothing
but eat and sing "Amna Aiya."

(Description of Etah & incidentally
Introduce Esquimaux Habits
in dissertation)