They paused as they saw him, and waited until he came up; but although they put back their bows and arrows when he told them no one wished to harm them, they would not relinquish their knives. As they crowded down to the boats, the captain told him to explain to them that they must put their knives away; but the chief of the tribe immediately retorted, "So we will, when you put down your rifles." To prove their peaceful intentions, one of the rifles was given to the chief to carry while the explorers remained with them, and this action so effectually satisfied them that no harm would be done to them that they offered to let their visitors take charge of their knives. The village contained over three hundred men, women, and children, and was formed for hunting purposes. The mass of ice showing across the open passage, they said, was the land of the white bear, an animal which, they explained, was very plentiful and of which they were greatly in fear. Several tales were told of the savagery of these creatures, a woman pitifully bewailing the loss of her little child, who was carried off by one of them when playing at the water's edge within her sight. A less mournful story was that of a seal hunter who, having speared one seal, was sitting by the side of his victim waiting for the mate to appear above the water, when he felt a tap on the back. Suspecting a trick by a fellow-huntsman, he did not turn round, whereupon he received a heavy blow on the side of the head which sent him sprawling. As he scrambled to his feet, angry at his comrade's roughness, he saw a big bear walking off with his seal. Upon the interpreter explaining how the white men's rifles could kill the bears, the chief at once invited him to come and live with them, offering as inducements his own daughter, a pleasant-looking girl of about fifteen, a fully furnished tent, and all the other necessary possessions of a well-to-do Eskimo. Failing in that, they invited the explorers to a feast of roast whale and venison, salmon, blubber, and other delicacies; but instead of taking from them, the explorers presented them with a number of gifts, and left them on the best of terms. A few days later and farther along the coast another small band was encountered, one of whom was wearing a brass button in his ear. The button was off a sailor's jacket, and upon being asked how he obtained it, the man replied it had been taken from a white man who had been killed by the tribe. He was asked for further particulars, in case the unfortunate might turn out to be one of Franklin's men. The Eskimo replied that it might have been done a year ago or when he was a child, but the huts the white men had built were still standing. The explorers at once persuaded him to take them to the spot, but on arrival they found the huts so weather-worn and overgrown with moss that more than a generation must have passed since they were built. [Illustration: AN IMMENSE ICEBERG.