Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/224

Rh would do. I had on, next my feet, civilization stockings, and intended keeping them on; but Pe-ta-to—for this is the name of the warm-hearted old mother—grasped first one foot and then the other, stripping each bare! Quick as thought she lifted up the double flaps of the front of her tuktoo jacket, and as quickly placed my ik-ke is-si-kars (cold feet) flatly upon her body, and against a breast whereon has fed as

THE HEIGHT OF HOSPITALITY.

robust and persevering a generation of Innuits as ever honoured this Northern land.

"This act of Petato's, represented in the preceding engraving, is considered by the natives the very beau ideal of genuine hospitality. Knowing this to be the custom of this people, and believing in the old saw that 'when you are in Rome you must do as the Romans do,' my heart leaped with gratitude for this kindly deed of good old Petato. My feet must have been like lumps of ice, and yet she quailed not at their contact with her calorific body. "While warming my feet in the peculiar mode written of, I told Smith and the Innuit Kooksmith that I wished to have a conversation with Petato relative to Kodlunarn, Oopungnewing, and Niountelik, and of white people, &c. &c.

"I asked Petato if she knew 'heavy stone.' Asked if she ever 'sat down' [that is, made her home] on Kodlunarn. To which she answered ' Ar-me-larng ' (Yes). Then I asked,