"Bushmen are called liars and thieves all over the Colony, but all those who stayed with us were truthful and very honest. On no occasion did they steal even a pocket-knife lost in the garden, or fruit from the trees. They might have taken sheep from hostile farmers, but they would never rob a friend or neighbour. They were cleanly in their habits, and most particular about manners.... As a people they were grateful and revengeful, independent in spirit, excellent fighters--who preferred death to captivity.... Captives were sometimes made servants, but not often well-treated, nor did they take to a settled life easily. Even kind masters found their longing for freedom hard to conquer." +The Nechilli Eskimo+ From Amundsen's _North West Passage_, vol. i, p. 294. (Constable, 1908.) "We were suddenly brought face to face here with a people from the Stone Age: we were abruptly carried back several thousand years in the advance of human progress, to people who as yet knew no other method of procuring fire than by rubbing two pieces of wood together, and who with great difficulty managed to get their food just lukewarm, over the seal-oil flame on a stone slab, while we cooked our food in a moment with our modern cooking apparatus. We came here, with our most ingenious and most recent inventions in the way of firearms, to people who still used lances, bows and arrows of reindeer horn.... However, we should be wrong if from the weapons, implements, and domestic appliances of these people we were to argue that they were of low intelligence. Their implements, apparently so very primitive, proved to be as well adapted to their existing requirements and conditions as experience and the skilful tests of many centuries could have made them." +Ugpi, an Eskimo+ From Amundsen vol. i, p. 190. "Ugpi or Uglen (the 'Owl') as we always called him, attracted immediate attention by his appearance. With his long black hair hanging over his shoulders, his dark eyes and frank honest expression, he would have been good-looking if his broad face and large mouth had not spoilt his beauty from a European standpoint. There was something serious, almost dreamy, about him. Honesty and truthfulness are unmistakably impressed on his features, and I would never have hesitated for a moment to entrust him with anything. During his association with us he became an exceptionally clever hunter both for birds and reindeer. He was about thirty years old and was married to Kabloka, a very small girl of seventeen." +Eskimo and Civilisation+ From Amundsen vol. ii, p. 48.