Page:Across the sub-Arctics of Canada (1897).djvu/160

 the square flipper seal, is nearly thirty feet in length. An Eskimo can handle his whip with great dexterity, being able not only to reach any particular dog in the pack, but to strike any part of its body, and with as much force as the occasion may require.

Another curious Eskimo practice, observed by the women, is that of daily chewing the boots of the household. As already intimated, these boots or moccasins are made of oil-tanned seal or deer-skins. The hair is always removed from the skin of which the foot of the moccasin is made, but not always from that part forming the leg. However, the point is this, that these moccasins, after having been wet and dried again, become very hard, and the most convenient or effective—or possibly the most agreeable—way of softening them seems to be by mastication. Whatever may be the reason for adopting this method, the fact is that nearly every morning the native women soften the shoes of the family most beautifully by chewing them. What to us would seem the disagreeable part of this operation cannot be thoroughly understood by one who has not some idea of the flavor of a genuine old Eskimo shoe.

In one of my trips in the land of the Eskimo I had an escort composed not only of men and women, old and young, but also of little children, several of whom could not have been more than five or six years old, and it was marvellous to see the powers of endurance of these little creatures, for they travelled along with the rest of the party, a distance of twenty-five miles, having no other object in view than that of seeing the white stranger.

The "shin-ig-bee," or Eskimo sleeping bag, is an article essential to the comfort of the traveller when