awahtok's  hut.                  571
pie, the dark recess behind them giving all £he effect of a grotto. There is one that brings bagk to me saddened memories of Elephanta and the merry friends that bore me company under its rock-chiselled portico. The fig-trees and the palms, and the gallant major's curries and his old India ale, are wanting in the picture. Sometimes again it is a canopy fringed with gems in the moonlight. Nothing can be purer or more beautiful.
"Morton reached the huts beyond Anoatok upon the fourth day after leaving the brig. There were four huts; but two of them are in ruins. They were all of them the homes of families only four winters ago. Of the two which are still habitable, Myouk, his father, mother, brother, and sister occupied one • and Awahtok and Ootuniah, with their wives and three young ones the other.
"It was evident from the meagreness of the larder that the hunters of the family had work to do; and from some signs which did not escape the sagacity of Morton it was plain that Myouk and his father had determined to seek their next dinner upon the floes. They were going upon a walrus-hunt; and Morton, true to the mission with which I had charged him, invited himself and Hans to be of the party.
"I have not yet described one of these exciting incidents of Esquimaux life. Morton was full of the one he witnessed; and his account of it when he came back was so graphic that I should be glad to escape from the egotism of personal narrative by giving it in his own language."