We conversed with the chief about our plan of going to Upernavik on sledges, and proposed to buy teams of his people, or hire them to drive us there. He received the proposal with a decided dissent, amounting almost to resentment. His people, he said, would not sell dogs at any price; they had only enough to preserve their own lives. This we knew to be false. We offered a great price, but he scorned the bribe, and talked with an expression of horror about our plan of passing with sledges over the Frozen Sea, as he called Melville Bay. While we were urging the sale by him of dogs and sledges he looked quizzically at our emaciated forms and sunken cheeks, and turning to the woman with a significant twinkle in his eye, he sucked in his cheeks. She returned the knowing glance, and sucked in her cheeks. This meant: We shall get all the white men's coveted things without paying when we find them starved and dead. This was a comforting view of the case--for them. We dropped the plan of going south, and proposed to the chief to carry some of our party to the ship. This he readily assented to, and said at least four sledges should go with Petersen, if to each driver should be given a knife and piece of wood. We closed the bargain gladly, and Petersen was to start in the morning. Guests and entertainers now sought rest. We gave the mother and child our bed in the corner. This was to us a self-denying act of courtesy, compelled by policy. We had usually given a good distance between us and such lodgers on account of certain specimens of natural history which swarmed upon their bodies, which, though starving, we did not desire. But to put her in a meaner place would be a serious affront, for which we might be obliged to pay dearly. About midnight voices were heard outside, and soon our young lover, the boy-hunter, entered, accompanied by a widow who was neither young, nor beautiful. The hut was in instant confusion. There was but little more sleep for the night, which was peculiarly hard on Petersen, who was to start in the morning on his long journey. We had no food with which to treat our guests, which they saw, and so supped upon the provisions which they brought. The widow ate raw young birds, of which she brought a supply saved over from the summer. The Angekok had decided that her husband's spirit had taken temporary residence in a walrus, so she was forbidden that animal. She chewed choice bits of her bird and offered them to us. We tried _politely_ to decline the kindness, but our refusal plainly offended her. The widow's husband had been carried out to sea on an ice-raft on the sudden breaking up of the floe, and had never been heard from. Whenever his name was mentioned she burst into tears. Petersen told us that, according to Esquimo custom in such cases, we were expected to join in the weeping.