Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/267

Rh except for the fresh meat boiling over the lamp, this Eskimo home could offer nothing. It was slightly oval—six or seven feet in one diameter and eight or nine in the other—and had on one side a low bank or shelf a couple of feet high and covered with caribou and musk-ox skins. This, the sleeping-shelf, was the only arrangement which might be called furniture unless one so considered the spears and spare bows stored overhead, the racks from which drying clothing hung and the pots and stone and beaten copper utensils for cutting up and cooking meat.

But, if the Eskimos possessed less than Geoff had expected, they offered to share what they had in no smaller spirit than that related of them. The woman who watched the pot boiling over the lamp smiled at each of her guests as they entered and, after nodding and staring about, seated themselves on the edge of the sleeping shelf. Two children who seemed to belong in the house crept in; and the hostess, removing the pot from the flame, passed portions of the meat about. The food was fresh, well cooked and generously given. So that