Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/248

Rh ambrosia and nectar! Once tasted, the cry is sure to be "More! more!" The seal-meat, I may state, is eaten by holding it in both hands, the fingers and the dental "mill" supplying the offices of both knife and fork. This mode of eating was known before such instruments were thought of. Among the Innuits generally, the following practice prevails: before the igloo wife hands any one a piece of meat, she "soups" it all over, that is, sucks out all the fluid from the meat that would probably otherwise drip out. Farthermore, if there be any foreign matter upon it, such as seal, dog, or reindeer hairs, she licks them all off with her pliant tongue.

On January 29th we had the cold so severe that the thermometer showed, during the night and in the morning, 82° below the freezing point! yet, strangely, I had experienced more severe sensations of cold when the temperature was at zero than at this low state. Still it was cold, and bitingly cold! How Ebierbing and the other men—who had again left on the previous evening—could keep to their watch during that cold night was to me marvellous; yet they did so; and when Ebierbing returned about 9 without success, he told me that he was unwearied in his watchfulness all through the dreary time. At midnight a seal had come to breathe, but he was not so ready or so smart—probably was too much frozen—as to strike in time, and therefore lost it.

Sometimes the wives accompany their husbands sealing, even in such weather.

Recording my own experience of igloo life at this time, I may here say that, having then spent twenty nights in a snow house, I enjoyed it exceedingly. Now, as I look back at the past, I find no reason to utter any thing different. I was as happy as circumstances permitted, even though with Innuits only for my companions. life has charms everywhere, and I must confess that Innuit life possesses those charms to a great degree for me. On the 31st we had a stranger visit us—a boy called Noo-ok-kong—who arrived from a spot one mile west of where