Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/793

Rh olfactory nerves, and when I drew the curtain and looked around on the piles of meat, the filthy cooking-vessels, and the heaps of reindeer skins in the background, I ran out and away as quickly as I could. If any one had told me then that I would soon be living without repugnance in just such surroundings, I should have resented the insinuation very angrily. But it was not long before the stress of circumstances and custom brought me to it, and I too found myself sharing the deerskin bed-place of the natives and cooking with them in the same kettle, though I generally took the precaution to use my own. Even the store of meat heaped up in the sides of the hut was often only too welcome to me, as was also the hospitable lamp by which the housewife sat caring that the wick should be kept well supplied with oil, and should burn evenly without smoking. With what joy, returning from a journey wet and chilled through, did I often greet the cheerful fire which warmed the hut comfortably, and the kindly hostess who dried and cleaned my clothes; and how haltingly did I as often leave the hospitable roof to go out on my solitary journeys from coast to coast, or into uninhabited regions!

The few tents which we found on our arrival at Kikkerton were inhabited by the Eskimos of the Scottish station, while all the other natives had gone fur-hunting; for as soon as the spring fishing is over and the sound is tolerably free from ice, they go in their boats up the fiords and set up their tents at the extreme ends of them.

While the women and older men stay here to catch salmon, of which immense numbers abound in the ponds and rivers at this season, the younger and more active go for days' journeys into the interior, sometimes getting as far as a hundred miles or more from their settlements. If they kill a large number of reindeer, they only bring the best meat and the skins on their backs to the camp. Then a great feast is given. All the people of the settlement are called together. An open fire of brush blazes under the kettle of meat, and every one has his part in the meal. The skins are carefully preserved, to be made up afterward into winter clothing. A favorite summer resort of the Eskimos is the great Lake Netilling, West of Cumberland Sound, the shore of which is frequented by numerous herds of that animal; and many start for that place with sledges in May.

While I was exploring the east coast of the sound with boats in the fall, a large number of Eskimos came back from their summer journeys. Some of them used old whale-boats, which they had got from some ship. The craft were loaded to the edge with the skins obtained during the season. Men, women, and children were singing, laughing, and chattering, dogs were howling, and every once in a while one person or another would reach down into the always-full pot that stood in the middle of the boat. Only the helmsman sat earnest and majestic on his high seat, and steered his craft. If the wind was unfavorable, oars were used. Occasionally a seal would lift his head out