When a larger habitation than usual is
required, they contrive, by putting two of these together, to form a
sort of double tent somewhat resembling a marquee, and supported by two
poles. The difference between these tents and the one I had seen in Lyon
Inlet the preceding autumn, struck me as remarkable, these having no
_wall_ of stones around them, as is usual in many that we have before
met with, nor do I know their reason for adopting this different mode of
construction.
Even if it were not the natural and happy disposition of these people to
be pleased, and to place implicit confidence wherever kind treatment is
experienced, that confidence would soon have been ensured by our
knowledge of their friends and relations to the southward, and the
information which we were enabled to give respecting their late and
intended movements. This, while it excited in them extreme surprise,
served also at once to remove all distrust or apprehension, so that we
soon found ourselves on the best terms imaginable. In return for all
this interesting information, they gave us the names of the different
portions of land in sight, many of which being recognised in their
countrymen's charts, we no longer entertained a doubt of our being near
the entrance of the strait to which all our hopes were directed.
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