Man The Fat Hunter

On the way south we happened to pick up a polar bear that was wandering about on shore. A day or two before that Palaiyak and Mangilanna had secured a young grizzly bear, and a day or two after Palaiyak got another one in the Melvill Mountains south of Langton Bay. In general, however, at this time we lived on the meat of the bearded seal, which the boys Palaiyak and Mangilanna secured by paddling out to sea in their kayaks and shooting the seals as they slept on floating cakes of ice. 

July 27th Ilavinirk, Natkusiak, and Mangilanna with our umiak started west to the Baillie Islands, while I remained behind doing archæological work around Langton Bay with the intermittent assistance of Palaiyak, Mamayauk, and Nogasak. In general, as I have had many occasions to point out, Nogasak was a very lazy and useless sort of person; but scratching around in the ground with the prospect of finding spear points or knives was something that appealed to her, and she really was my most valuable assistant throughout the entire summer in the work of excavating. I am inclined to think the main reason may have been that I discouraged her from the first, for fear that she might damage through carelessness some important find that she made. She was therefore very careful, and whenever she found a sign of anything she would come to me and tell me about it before she finally dug it up. It would no doubt have been more desirable had I had the means of employing expert diggers who would have done everything according to the book, but as it was it seemed to be much more useful that Nogasak should find things in the wrong way than that they should remain buried and probably unfound forever. 

The time had now come when the caribou might be expected to have a little fat on their backs and the skins were becoming suitable for clothing. Altogether, myself and various members of our party had killed only half a dozen or so caribou since we came back to Langton Bay, and the skins of all of them had been of little use, for they were full of large holes made by the escaping grubs of the bot-fly which had been growing under the hides of the poor animals' backs all winter and which had now just come out of their warm quarters and taken wing. The hair also is rather too short until towards the end of July, but from that time until the 20th of September it is in excellent condition for clothing, after which it becomes too long. 

It is not only the length of hair which is right in the month of August, but also the thickness of the hide itself. From Christmas time until May the skin is as thin as parchment and there is very little strength to it. In June it begins to thicken, but is as yet full of bot-fly holes. Towards the end of July these holes heal up and the skin becomes of the right thickness, while by October it has become too thick and unpliable for use as clothing. For that reason we use the hides of ordinary animals taken in September and October for clothing only in emergencies, and otherwise utilize them for bedding only, except the skins of the old bull caribou, which have often the thickness of sole leather and which we accordingly use for boot soles for our winter footwear. 

It was because we knew the caribou were getting into condition and because we had to “ take thought for the morrow ” in the matter of clothing for winter that we set out on July 30th southward to look for caribou. 

The Endicott Mountains look like mountains true enough as seen from the sea, but when in the three-mile walk inland you have climbed up two thousand feet or so you find yourself on a fairly level table- land, although within three miles from the sea the streams begin to flow inland towards Horton River, which lies about fifteen miles away, parallel to the coast. 

Soon after I reached the top of this plateau and about five miles from camp I came upon a grizzly bear accompanied by two small cubs. I did not realize how small the cubs were at first and shot the old animal and one of the cubs. On closer approach I saw that the living animal was but the size of a wolverine and showed no fear or concern of me whatever. It occurred to me then that it would be a very interesting thing to take the thing alive; but unfortunately I did not have any string with me or other means of taking the cub along to the coast. I therefore returned home and immediately hitched our dogs to a sled, with which and an empty box we started to fetch the bear. It was a matter of eight or ten hours until we got to where I had left the cub behind; but although he had not been afraid of me then, the poor fellow had by now evidently realized the death of his two relatives, and we were at least half a mile away when he saw us and took to his heels. I followed him a considerable distance while the others skinned the two dead bears, but I never got anywhere near him. 

With me the matter of big game hunting is another case of " swords sticking to hands that seek the plow.” I am afraid I am not a true sportsman. It is impossible for me to get enjoyment out of the killing of animals (and as for that, if I did I should get a job in the Chicago stockyards rather than follow poor frightened wild things around with a rifle). It is mere nonsense to talk of wild animals (in the case of those on the continent of North America at least) having a chance for their lives against the hunter. They all give us as wide a berth as they can; their only desire and hope of safety is in hiding or in flight. None of them, so far as my experience goes, will fight unless wounded or cornered, or in the defence of their helpless young. No matter how well they are provided by nature with claws and teeth and stout muscles, they have no more chance against a man with a modern rifle than a fly has against a sledge hammer. 

Unfortunately the Barren Ground grizzly is a priceless thing scientifically. There are practically none of them in museums and one of our avowed objects in coming North was to get some. I never allowed any to pass, therefore, and I shot altogether thirteen, but somehow the killing of these poor animals affected me more than that of any others. They are provided by nature with a fighting equip ment second to no animal on the continent, and yet they try their best to live peacefully and inoffensively. They feed on roots almost entirely, and whenever they discover the sign of a human being, whether they see or smell his footprints, or see him or get his wind, they immediately use every means in their power to get out of the way. But they are dull of sight and not very quick of hearing and when the hunter once sees them there is no escape. 

August 8th Palaiyak hunted to the south also and shot three deer about five miles away from camp. We were about to set out to fetch the meat of them when a sail appeared to the north which our glasses told us was Captain Bernard's Teddy Bear. It was reasonable enough she should arrive just then, although we had not expected her for a week or so yet. 

The Teddy Bear dropped anchor in the harbor late in the afternoon of August 9th, bringing Dr. Anderson, Tannaumirk, and Pannigabluk, all safe. Spring had been very early in Coronation Gulf, and they really could have come out sooner than they did. Cruising up along the southwest coast of Victoria Island they had found our beacon on Bell Island and had thereby, as we intended, been saved from the trip to Banks Island to look for us. 

I was very confident that we would be able in the neighborhood of Langton Bay to kill caribou and grizzly bears enough for our food the coming winter, but our Eskimo knew very well that their country men at the Baillie Islands, less than a hundred miles to the westward, would have plenty of flour, tea, and things of that sort, and we felt they would not be content with us unless they had it also. Captain Bernard had a considerable stock of these things and kindly furnished us with a supply. Dr. Anderson and I are not particular about such luxuries as flour and sugar, but our Eskimo had no scientific interests to keep them in the country, and, like servants everywhere, wanted as high wages and as good food as possible. So of course we had to supply them with what we could get in the way of imported food. 

It is not really so much that these Eskimo regard baking powder bread as such excellent food, but it is rather that they know it is expensive and they are human enough to want to have their neighbors know that they can afford to have this and that to eat even if it does cost money, differing not so much from the rest of humanity in that matter. They judge things chiefly by price, and desire them in proportion to their current market value. 

Dr. Anderson was anxious to communicate with the whaling ships if possible for the purpose of sending out mail and for other reasons,, and so he continued west with the Teddy Bear toward the Baillie Islands with the intention of returning thence with Ilavinirk and Nat kusiak in our umiak, while Tannaumirk and Pannigabluk came ashore and joined us. As the caribou season was now at its best we stayed around Langton Bay only a few hours after the Teddy Bear left and then started inland in the search for game. 

As we have pointed out elsewhere, the caribou hunt is not merely to secure meat. A supply of dried venison to tide you over the sunless days helps you to face the season with confidence, but the main consideration is to secure skins for clothing against the winter. Our method of hunting is in general that we travel from one high hill to another high hill, pause on each hilltop and with our field glasses and telescopes carefully examine every inch of visible ground in the hope of seeing caribou. 

On these summer hunts the dogs are equipped with pack saddles, consisting essentially of two big pouches that nearly reach to the ground on either side of the animal when the pack is in place. These pack saddles are loaded with the heaviest and least bulky things we have to carry. A fifty-pound dog will carry a forty-pound pack or even a heavier one, and he will carry it all day, although his walking gait is rather slow, perhaps not much over two miles an hour. The people of the party will carry on their backs the bulky things, such as the bedding, tents, and cooking utensils. A man does not carry more than thirty or forty pounds, although under special conditions he may carry as much as a hundred and fifty or even two hundred. 

When caribou are discovered, the women and children, if there are any in the party, stop and make camp, while the men secure the caribou, skin them, and cut them up. Usually long before the skinning is done camp has been made; and if the caribou are located so near that the women know the killing has actually taken place, they come with the dogs to help bring home the meat; or if a considerable number of caribou are killed, it may be easier than moving the meat to camp to move the camp up to the scene of the slaughter. The meat is then cut up into thin strips and spread out on the ground or on stones to dry; or if there are sticks available a frame is made over which the meat is hung up. The skins too are spread out to dry. The process of drying meat delays camp moving, so the men go out and hunt for more caribou in all directions from the camp; and if they secure any they usually bring home the meat, unless indeed they make a big killing, in which case it is easier to transport the half-dried meat and the camp gear to the deer kill than to bring home the fresh meat to camp. Then whenever the meat is dried and if no more caribou are likely to be found in that immediate vicinity, the meat is cached in the safest way possible, usually by stones being piled on top of it, and the party moves on, carrying with it the dried caribou skins, for they are too precious to leave behind to the uncertain safety of a cache. The same kind of traveling as before is resumed as soon as all the meat killable in any locality has been turned into dry meat, the party marching from hilltop to hilltop and continually looking for game, which is finally found. And then the same process repeats itself. 

On the particular hunt under discussion the caribou were not very numerous. First we went about fifteen miles south from Langton Bay to the head of a small wooded creek that runs into Horton River from the north, and here during the course of a week we killed about a dozen caribou and three grizzly bears. The Eskimo generally merely wind-dry the meat, but personally I rather prefer the Indian method of smoke-drying it, and so we built a spruce bough lodge in the Indian style and dried the meat that way. This has an additional advantage, for when you want to leave for another hunting camp you can with tolerable safety cache anything you want inside of the abandoned lodge, for the smoke smell, while it is at all fresh, will keep beasts of prey at a distance. Eventually, of course (in a fortnight or so), some wolverine will become contemptuous enough of the fire smell which it at first dreaded, and will venture into the deserted house to steal. 

We remained about a week in the camp on the wooded creek-head where we had made our first kill, and then we were forced to leave it on account of the absence of caribou in that neighborhood, and by the fact that I one day happened to kill four animals a long way to the eastward in a country where game signs were more numerous. Moving to these better pastures was a matter of nearly a day's walk, for we traveled heavy laden with the caribou fat and skins that were too precious to risk leaving behind with the meat. Traveling at this time of year is particularly pleasant, for while the days are still warm, the placid nights are cool and the power of the mosquito has been broken. There are few things in one's experience in the North that are so pleasant to remember as these autumn hunts, when the camp is pitched among a clump of spruce trees at the bottom of some ravine, and when at the end of a day's hunt you can gather around a crackling fire in the enveloping darkness, for the four-months' summer day is just over. The occasional howl of a wolf in the near shadow lends an additional romance, especially if, as not seldom happens, the wolves are so numerous and near that the dogs become frightened and gather in a close circle around the fire. Few meals can be more satisfying, either, at the end of a hard day's work, than a caribou head that has been rotated continuously before the fire until it is roasted through, even to the base of the tongue and the center of the brain. The dreams of boyhood seldom come true, but I am not sure that there is not sometimes as much romance about the reality of such evenings as there was about the dreams of Crusoe- like adventures on desert islands.

Though times hare changed since the old days, and a man can sell his fish and blubber and fiirs at the store and buy flour and ship's biscuits and other plain things, the nature of the Eskimos has not changed. They still like to depend on the hunt for their daily food ; they still go out hungry in the morning, and gorge themselves on the raw flesh of the seals they bring home. This is their custom, part of their nature, born in them; they are a nation of hunters, and whatever changes in morals and housing and education passing years have seen among them, in tiiis one thing they do not change. And well it is that the Mission has been able to keep them true to their traditions in this matter, for to my mind there is no doubt at all that the life of a hunter is the ideal life for an Eskimo. It is the life for which he is especially gifted; the raw meat that he eats keeps him fit and well, and the exposure hardens him to bear the climate of his firozen land. And I do not base my belief on conjecture only; I base it upon what I have seen. At Okak, and in the north generally, the people are broad and plump, with flat faces and sunken noses; but further south I have seen lean, sharp-faced Eskimos, with bony limbs and pointed noses. They are pure-blooded Eskimos, all of them ; they may be lean and bony without any admixture of other blood; and the cause of the change lies in the altered food and habits of the people themselves. 

At the southern stations they are more in contact with the outside world, and, especially, there are English-speaking settlers living among them, cod-fishing and fur-trapping. The Eskimos are born imitators; they do what they see others do; and when they have settler folks living among them in little wooden shacks like their own, and passing in and out among them, it is small wonder that they fall into the settler habits of food and clothing. 

They take to garments of cloth instead of the sealskin that Nature has given them ; and they eat less of their raw meat and blubber and more of the bread and tea and cooked meats of the settlers. And Nature rebels. The southern Eskimos are, as a consequence, less hardy than their northern brethren; they cannot bear cold so well, but need more fire, more clothing, and more warm food; and their children are more puny. This is an unfortunate thing, but I must record it for completeness' sake, because it is one of the dangers that threatens the Eskimo people as civilisation overtakes them. If they give up their native foods they will dwindle and die out. This is my firm belief, and so I record with all the more satisfaction how I found my neighbours at Okak to be real Eskimo hunters. 

During the long winter that followed the home- coming of the families to their wooden homes in the village the men were seldom idle. In my visits to the houses I always found the women in charge and my question ** Aipait nannek& ? " (where is your husband ?) nearly always brought the answer "Sinamut aigivok " (he is off to the edge of the ice again). That is the hunting-place that the Eskimos love, the edge of the ocean ice, where the seals sport in the chilly water or clamber on the ice to rest. Sometimes, when sudden sickness has called me into the village in the small hours of the morning, I have heard the scufflings and yelpings of dogs, and have seen dim and shadowy men, dressed in sealskin clothes, trotting down the track among the hununocks towards the sea ice, off to the "sina." 

 I was fortified with a good breakfast of bacon and eggs— eggs kept in waterglass since the ship brought them last summer — but Gustaf would have none. "No," he said, "I shall eat by-and-by" ; and from what I had seen of Eskimo mealtimes I imagined him disposing of several pounds of seal-meat and a pint or two of weak tea when the day's work was done. Nevertheless I saw that he was chewing, pensively chewing with a steady champ, champ, champ, as he disentangled the dogs from one another. 

"What are you chewing?" said I. 

"Eoak" (frozen), answered Gustaf ; and he went on to tell me that he had got a mouthful of raw sealmeat; that was plenty; it was the custom of the people. "Ananak" (splendid) ; he said, "it makes me warm; it gives me sinews; piovok-illa" (good indeed). I envied him his warmth, for on a raw bleak morning like that the effects of bacon and hot coffee are soon gone, and I was forced to try to trot in the darkness to keep my circulation up.

If an Eskimo has pain in any part of his body, that part is, to his way of thinking, broken. And similarly, if a man has a bad cough, his lungs are broken, and so on. The woman who came from the frozen snow-huts at Killinek to live in her brother's wooden house at Okak, and who found the warmth more than she could endure, used just the same expression when she said "My life is broken." This is the idea upon which the native doctors work: something is broken, and must be mended. In every village there are several of these doctors/ men and women who by some means or other have gained a reputation for unusual skill in dealing with sickness. Of medicines they have very few. They stew the twigs of the rosemary, and make a sort of tea: this is their panacea, and as it causes sweating perhaps it has its value. 

The brain of the codfish is another of their native medicines ; and they have a great fondness for giving the raw liver of the seal to sick people. Many a time have I found them munching the little red cubes into which they like it chopped. I found this little habit out because I used to wonder why seal's liver was so difficult to get from the people. It was the only part of the fishy flavoured seal that we could eat with any degree of enjoyment, and during the winter it was often the only form of fresh meat-food that we could obtain; but in spite of the good price that we offered only a very few livers came our way. Juliana, our first Eskimo hospital nurse, explained the mystery in a few words: "Tingo (liver) very good for sick people." 

The fact is that the people set great store by it as a health-giving food, and there are generally feeble and ailing ones wanting all the liver they can get : also, by the way, it is a great tit-bit, so that we con- sidered ourselves rather fortunate to get any at all. The native "doctor" sets very little store by his medicines; there is "mending" to be done, and accordingly he carries out his treatment by means of lengthy and mysterious manipulations. The Eskimos have a general idea of the constitution of the body; their constant work upon the seals gives them that ; they know whereabouts the various organs are, but of the marvellous way in which those organs work together in the bodily economy they have no idea. The wonders of physiology are beyond the grasp of their child minds ; they do not puzzle their heads over what they do not understand: "Taimaipok" (it is so), they say, and are content.

• Marmota caligata (Eschscholtz ). Hoary Marmot. Tjik'rik - pŭk, “ big marmot” (Alaskan Eskimo). Common in the Endicott Mountains north to the edge of the foot-hills. A few skins are taken by the inland Eskimo, and sold under the name of “ Badger.” Eskimo east of the Mackenzie say that the animal is not found in their country, but know the species by name, from garments brought in by western Eskimo. 

• Citellus parryi kennicotti (Ross). Mackenzie Spermophile. Tjik' rik (Alaskan Eskimo). Tsik -tsik (Mackenzie Eskimo). Common all along the northern coast of Alaska, in the Mackenzie delta, and east to Franklin Bay. Less common in the more rocky and stony country east of Franklin Bay. These Spermophiles are particularly abundant in sandy, alluvial river bottoms where the ground thaws earlier and to a greater depth, allowing the animals to dig their favorite roots and excavate their burrows more readily than on the frozen, moss - covered tundra. They feed principally upon the roots of various species of Polygonum, the “masū” roots of the Eskimo, and are very fat in the fall, and for a short time after coming out of winter quarter. The bulk of the Spermophiles go into hibernation in the latter part of September, but a few are occasionally seen until the middle of October. They come out again about the middle of April. The flesh is eaten by the Eskimo, and the skins make very good warm garments. The males fight viciously among themselves, and most of the old males are badly scarred from their numerous battles. 

• Citellus parryi (Richardson ). Hudson Bay Spermophile. Srik srik (Coronation Gulf Eskimo). Mr. E. A. Preble (N. A. Fauna, No. 27, p. 160) has conventionally placed the line between the habitats of C. parryi and of C. p. kenni cotti as the watershed between the Coppermine River and Great Bear Lake. The appearance and habits of the two varieties are similar, kennicotti being described as paler in color. The Spermophiles are very abundant in the sandy clay hills around the mouth of the Copper mine, and at various places along the south side of Coronation Gulf, and form a large part of the food of the Copper Eskimo in May and June, in the interim after they abandon sealing and leave their snow houses on the ice, and before they go inland for the summer Caribou hunt. We saw no evidence of the presence of Spermophiles on southern Victoria Island, and the Eskimo say that they are not found on the island. Citellus franklini (Sabine). Franklin's Spermophile. This species was not observed farther north than the Edmonton and Athabaska Landing trail. 

• Citellus tridecemlineatus (Mitchill). Thirteen - lined Spermophile. Number seen on the trail a few miles north of Edmonton, Al berta, but none farther north.

One of the greatest problems that presented itself in those early days of Okak Hospital was the problem of food. So often the people had said "We are Eskimos — we are different from Europeans" that I felt certain, that there was a great truth in it. The missionaries have done the people a good service in persuading them to remain Eskimos in their food and clothing: there has been no attempt to force European ways upon them; and I am convinced of the wisdom of this attitude because I have seen how the natives degenerate when they take to European food. They lose their natural coating of fat to a great extent, and need more clothing to withstand the cold; they become less robust, less able to endure fatigue, and their children are puny. 

Perhaps it is their great tendency to imitate that explains why, at the more southern of the stations, where English-speaking settlers live among the people at their vUlages, the Eskimos are not so fine physically as those living in the north. Whatever the reason, the fact remains: and so I tackled the feeding problem. When a sick man came to hospital I told his friends "You may bring Eskimo foods for him," and they hailed the suggestion with delight. I found them a little shy, at first, of letting me know what Eskimo foods really were. I knew from hearsay that seal meat and codfish are the staple things; and for a while the sick folks were supplied with those: but presently friends began quietly to bring other things —Eskimo dainties, I might call them. I went into a ward one day, and found a woman sitting up in bed sucking and chewing at a pile of raw fish-heads — which she hastily set aside when she saw me. Presently she took them up again and fell to with the remark, uttered with a shy smile, "Mammadlarput ukkoa (these taste very good)." Another had a lot of what looked like dried dates, threaded on a string. This curious collection looked very like a necklace, and she kept it by her bedside, and picked one of the objects off to chew whenever the fancy seized her. They puzzled me for a time, until Juliana (who had made my skin clothes, and had now become our first Eskimo nurse) enlightened me. "These are trout-stomachs, dried in the open air"— a real Eskimo tit-bit. 

I might make a long list of the foods the people brought — seal meat raw, dried, boiled, fried, and even made into a stew with flour and giving forth a most appetising smell; the flesh of reindeer, foxes, bears, hues, sea-birds of all sorts; eggs of gulls, sea-pigeons and ptarmigan, the gull's eggs especially being sometimes in a half-hatched state, with great, awful looking eyes inside them; trout and cod and salmon; the boiled skin of the white whale and the walrus; raw reindeer lips and ears — these are only some of the peculiarly Eskimo dishes that passed before our eyes; to say nothing of attempts at European cookery, such as home-baked bread, sometimes grey and sodden, sometimes light and wholesome, so that we wondered how Eskimo hands and Eskimo stoves could bake so well; roasted dough, as hard as bricks, a concoction of flour and water baked on the top of a tiny iron stove; and even, on festal occasions, dough with currants. 

The list might be longer: as a matter of fact, about the only food the people did not bring to hospital was their great delicacy — rotten seal-flippers. I made the acquaintance of this remarkable item on the Eskimo menu when I was visiting in one of the houses on the hill. The people were grouped round a wooden tub which contained a pile of grey and slimy somethings; the smell that arose from the tub was subtle and evil. 

"What have you got?'' I asked them; and the head man of the household answered with the Eskimo word for "rotten." He held a flipper up for me to see, and shook his head with a smile as he said "You could not eat that; it would make you ill."

"Ahaila," said another man in the circle, "only strong people can eat rotten flippers. No good for sick people. Illdle, but we like them, and they do us good, but the people in the south have forgotten how to eat rotten flippers, and their stomachs have grown too weak. Mammadlarpulle (but they taste good)." 

How long those flippers had been soaking in that tub I did not find out, but they were assuredly gamey. 

And the man spoke a truth; the northern Eskimos are far more primitive in their food than are the southerners; and yet, all along the coast, they still keep to the staple diet of raw meat that earned for them in olden times the epithet "Eskimo —eater of raw flesh" which, as the story goes, the Indians hurled at them in derision. And without a doubt the raw foods suit their peculiar constitution the best. 

I found that the people refuse food so long as they feel acutely ill: their one cry is "Immilanga, immilanga (water, water)." As a consequence they waste away at an extraordinary rate; and after a few days of serious illness the qumdam plump and ruddy Eskimo is gaunt and haggard, with bony face and wrinkled skin; he seems to have grown old all of a sudden. But with the beginning of convalescence the feeding begins. So soon as the invalid loses his pains and his feeling of misery his appetite returns, and he devours immense quantities of meat and fish, washing them down with copious draughts of water. This fattening process is even more wonderful to watch than the wasting: the hollow cheeks fill out, wrinkles disappear, limbs grow round and plump again, and the face locks younger day by day. All sorts of food are welcome, but without a doubt the native foods are the foods that work the miracle. I have seen the people sitting up in bed, munching strip after strip of tough dried codfish and leathery nipko (dried reindeer meat), and dipping the strips between the bites into a cup of cod-liver oil kept handy for the purpose. I suppose the oil moistened the meat ; at any rate it gave it a proper Eskimo flavour — but it must be proper Eskimo oil. I thought to save trouble by getting a gallon of the real thing from the oil yard ; but no, the sick folks wanted it fresh and home made, and I besought their friends to bring them some. It came, the crude article, brown and nauseous, the result of frying Uvers over the stove in the family frying-pan ; and it was like honey to their palate. They dipped and chewed, and sucked and chewed and dipped again, and said "Piovok'' (it is good), "Ananak" (splendid). And I wondered, as I watched them eat, whether it was that same all-useful frying-pan that gave the subtle and indescribable flavour to all home-made Eskimo foods, a flavour that the people seemed to miss in the native cookery done in our hospital kitchen.

 But, after all, the raw foods suit them best, and they know it. I went into one of the huts during my first week in Okak, to see a young woman who was just recovering from a serious illness. The spectacle that greeted me when I opened the door was enough to alarm the bravest: there sat the woman on her bed, a gaunt and white-faced spectre, with her breast bare, and blood dripping from her mouth. I thought some dire catastrophe had happened. "Whatever is the matter?" I said. 

For a moment she was silent: she was shy: then she said "My husband has brought me home akkigivik (a partridge)," and she lifted her hands to her mouth again, and tore with gusto at the raw, warm flesh of the bird. When once their shyness was overcome there was no difficulty about feeding; some native food or other was always in season, and people were always willing to bring a share of what they had. There was genuine sacrifice— sacrifice, I mean, with the right motive behind it — in those gifts of meat. Men used to come with dishes and pots, containing lumps of raw flesh or samples of native cookery, and hand them over with a shy smile and a laconic ''for the sick folks." And, incidentally, it was over a matter of food that my friend Paulus showed me that the people had really grasped the meaning of those bedsteads that had puzzled Veronica. He came one day dangling a leg of reindeer meat, and handed it to me with a little speech. "I know,'' he said, ''that nipko is very good for the sick folks. They like it, and it gives them nukke (sinews). Take this meat, and have it made into nipko. No, I will not take it home, because if I do the meat will be eaten up. Keep it here, and have it dried; then you will have some good nipko for next winter, to give to the sick people if there are any."