MENTAL AND MORAL CHARACTERISTICS. 113

bravery in a man who was, three years after, to surrender to La Peyrouse
without firing a shot a strong stone fort which had been forty years in build-
ing, and which ‘would have resisted the attack of a more considerable force’”!.

But we wander from the awful scenes of the Dénés’ cruelty by the banks
of the Coppermine. The traveller adds: “The brutish manner in which these
savages used the bodies they had so cruelly bereaved of life was so shocking,
that it would be indecent to describe it’. It must indeed have been so, for
my pen refuses to transcribe even what he then says of the way the women’s
bodies were treated.

To complete the picture of this unholy transaction it only remains to
add that, after having fired amidst another group of innocent Eskimos who
were so ignorant of the use of fire-arms that they ran to examine the nature
of the pieces of lead that flattened themselves against the rocks until one of
their number was struck by a bullet, they finally came upon an old man of
whose death they made so sure that Hearne remarks: “I verily believe not
less than twenty had a hand in his death, as his whole body was like a
cullender”?. The same revolting scene was soon after re-enacted in connection
with an old woman. “There was scarcely a man who had not a thrust at her
with his spear; and many in doing this aimed at torture rather than imme-
diate death, as they not only poked out her eyes, but stabbed her in many
parts very remote from those which are vital’.

Their great Honesty.

And yet these same people, savage as they undoubtedly are, can boast
some excellent qualities. They are friendly and obliging towards one another,
and regard rendering service to a fellow tribesman as a matter of course.
They are passionately attached to their offspring; indeed, so very fond of
them that they hardly ever correct them. This affection, though not of a
demonstrative kind as among some nations, is fully reciprocated by the
children. They are also progressive and yearn after knowledge, though too
inconstant to apply themselves to any prolonged study. They are deeply
religious, or, for the lack of true religion, profoundly superstitious. This
natural propensity, when turned in the right direction, makes them ready
adepts of Christianity, and they remain, as a rule, singularly attached to
their faith.

* Umfreville, one of the garrison, quoted by G. Bryce in his “History of the Hudson’s
Bay Company”, p. 106. Toronto, 1900. Rev. J. West, who saw its ruins in 1823, says that
“it appears to have been strongly fortified, and from its situation must have been capable of
making a formidable resistance to an enemy; and it can never cease to be a matter of surprise
that it should have been surrendered without firing a shot. The walls and bastions are still
remaining, which are strewed with a considerable number of cannon, spiked, and of large
calibre” (“The Substance of a Journal’, p. 170).
? Op. cit., p. 158.
* Op. cit., p. 159.