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1860 Monday Nov 26th for whose safety we have had a deep solitude since last Eve arrived to their Igloos without any accident befalling them. Am I not blessed with good news? A thousand blessings are ours every day & yet unmindful - unthankful are we! At X this AM Ther had fallen to 23° - At 3 AM it stood 32 1/2. Barometer at X A.M. 29.500 At 7 o'clock this Eve Ther 20 1/2 Bar 29.7 wind SW No Sun Moon or stars in sight. Wind breezing up. VIII Night Ther 20° Bar 29.725 Moon struggling to show her enlightened face but the clouds prevent it. [[line across page]] Tuesday, Nov. 27th 1869 The fore part of this day - & indeed the latter part - a continuation of Cloudy weather. Ebierbing & his nuliana came to visit me to-day - Tuk-o-li-too, the nuliana, brought the Book which I presented her, being very anxious to progress in her reading & spelling exercises. They spent most of the day with me, both engaged in the aft cabin side by side, learning. Ebierbing is getting interested. As yet he cannot call all the letters of the alphabet by their proper names. While Hannah's progress is such that she can now read in words of one syllable & spell them when said words are put to her for spelling. This is rapid progress, for she has taken but few lessons. When she began she could not speak all the letters of the alphabet properly. What she had accomplished was by her own exertions without any one or more interesting themselves to [[end page]] [[start page]] 1860 Tuesday Nov 26th assist her. Tuk-o-li-too tells me that she used to get hold of any scraps of paper of the Whalers that had printed letters upon them & copy them off. She has shown me what she had copied - She has repeated the alphabet many times in the book shown me, & done it quite well, yet she could not call more than 1/2 the letters when I began to instruct her. She can already spell; "We", "Get", "Goat", "Are" "So", "Sew", "To", "Too", "Two", "Let", "Up", "go", "boy", "Will" & 100 other words of 2 & 3 letters. I had much "fine fun", today, after learning Ebierbing how to spell several short words, by putting the same ones to Tuk-o-li-too (Hannah) desiring that she should [[underlined]] mis- [[/underlined]] spell now & then. Ebierbring was delighted in [[underlined]] his [[/underlined]] detecting [[underlined]] her [[/underlined]] mistakes; & this [[underlined]] enthused [[/underlined]] him so that now he feels a deep interest in learning. The backwardness of the Season in freezing up here, puts the situation of the natives to almost an alarming state. They are out of almost every article of provision. Some of those at the upper village are out of blubber therefore can have no friendly lamp to give them light & heat. The Esquimaux Lamp is the "All in all" to this people. By it their "Igloo" is enlightened & kept - [[underlined]] warmer than it otherwise would be! [[/underlined]] By it they melt ice for their drink - by it they dry their clothing, mittens, Boots & stockings. Without the [[underlined]] Esquimaux Lamp this people could not live. [[underlined]] - Not because of the warmth they get from it for their bodies - or because of cooking the food they eat do they require their Lamp. In neither of these ways do they reap much advantage. It is mainly in drying their skin clothing which they wear & thawing ice on snow for drink, that its excellent usefulness is seen. Secondarily its light by which, during the long Arctic night of winter they can repair their clothing & make them; - by which they can do any thing indirectly bearing upon them gaining a subsistence. Oil has been loaned the natives by the G.H. - a good deed!
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