When they left the ship I went on shore with them, and by this time several of their wives and children were come to the watering-place. I distributed some trinkets among them, with which they seemed pleased for a moment, and they gave us some of their arms in return; they gave us also several pieces of mundic, such as is found in the tin mines of Cornwall: they made us understand that they found it in the mountains, where there are probably mines of tin, and perhaps of more valuable metal. As this seems to be the most dreary and inhospitable country in the world, not excepting the worst parts of Sweden and Norway, the people seem to be the lowest and most deplorable of all human beings. Their perfect indifference to every thing they saw, which marked the disparity between our state and their own, though it may preserve them from the regret and anguish of unsatisfied desires, seems, notwithstanding, to imply a defect in their nature; for those who are satisfied with the gratifications of a brute, can have little pretension to the prerogatives of men. When they left us and embarked in their canoes, they hoisted a seal skin for a sail, and steered for the southern shore, where we saw many of their hovels; and we remarked that not one of them looked behind, either at us or at the ship, so little impression had the wonders they had seen made upon their minds, and so much did they appear to be absorbed in the present, without any habitual exercise of their power to reflect upon the past.

In this station we continued till Tuesday the 3d of February. At about half an hour past twelve we weighed, and in a sudden squall were taken a-back, so as that both ships were in the most imminent danger of being driven ashore

Voyaging Accounts