Historical Event
Date:
January 1, 1951
Short Description:
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The all-meat routine becomes natural pretty soon, and after a while one hardly misses other foods, just gorging himself on flesh and fish. The Eskimos do it, why shouldn't we?

Title:
Book:
Person:
Inuk
Roger Buliard
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Important Text:
But I was getting used to the Eskimo diet, of course. It is not as bad as you might think. The all-meat routine becomes natural pretty soon, and after a while one hardly misses other foods, just gorging himself on flesh and fish. The Eskimos do it, why shouldn't we? The only thing I really missed was tobacco, and, perhaps, sugar. As for the rest, when we were hunting seal, we ate seal. Later, there were sea gulls' eggs. And sea gulls too. Also ducks. We were really hungry only during the period when the ocean was breaking up, and that year the process seemed endless. Thus I noted:
July 6... The ice won't go. It just rots away, and of course there is no hunting. Nothing much to eat but dried seal meat, and that's getting scarce.
July 8... Put out two nets at the mouth of the river. No fish.
July 11...At last, two fish and three ducks in the first net. We didn't even bother with the second net, but devoured the catch without pausing for breath, completely disregarding our shrunken stomachs.
...We finally reached Baillie Island, having eaten nothing during the trip but dried fish dipped in overdone seal oil, aside from one fresh seal we had been able to kill enroute. At Baillie I went ashore and did some shopping--flour, butter, coffee, and all the trimmings, and enjoyed a feast. Next day we started for Tuktuk.