70 The Rice Institute Pamphlet
1577, at the north foreland of Frobisher Bay. And Best is a
much more reliable informant for this expedition than
Dionyse Settle, who was not an officer of the expedition, and
who was vain, garrulous, and tiresomely philosophical. That
Best also wrote much more delightful prose is not perhaps a
recommendation for his historical veracity, but we can give
an example that moves the theme forward at the same time:
describing one armed encounter between the English and
the natives, he writes, . . When the Salvages heard the
shot of one of our calivers (and yet having first bestowed
their arrowes) they ranne away, our men speedily following
them. But a servant of my Lorde of Warwick, called Nich-
olas Conger a good footman, and uncombred with any furni-
ture having only a dagger at his backe overtooke one of
them, and being a Cornishman and a good wrastler, shewed
his companion such a Cornish tricke, that he made his sides
ake against the ground for a moneth after. And so being
stayed, he was taken alive and brought away, but the other
escaped. Thus with their strange and new prey our men re-
paired to their boates. . . .”1<J This was the first of the cap-
tives taken in this expedition, and the “Cornish tricke”
turned out to be the death of the Eskimo, as we shall see.
On August 2, a fierce battle took place between part of the
English party and sixteen or eighteen of the Eskimos, of
whom five or six were slain; one Enghshman was wounded.
Among the Eskimos were two women, one old and one
young with a baby. The Enghsh captured them, but let the
old one go, since she was so ugly that “our men thought
shee had bene a devill or some witch.” The child suffered
an arrow wound in the arm, “and our Surgeon meaning to
heale her childes arme, applyed salves thereunto. But she