AMONG THE ESKIMO.

Te Aroha News, Volume VI, Issue 337, 26 January 1889, Page 3

AMONG THE ESKIMO.

The walrus forms fche principal food of the Eskimo race wherever ib is found, and ib is so generally distributed over the Arctic part of the North American continent that it undoubtedly makes up the bulk of sus* tenance for the whole race, with the vai'ious seals following closoly behind, and both these kinds of meats amply supplemented by salmon, cod, whale, musk oxen, reindeer and polar bear, with an occasional tribe here and there preponderated^ in some of these latter foods over the walrus and seal. The walrus will not live where ib is &o cold that all the water chan- i nels are frozen over in the winter, as he cannot cut a breathing hole through the ! thick ice like bhe smaller hair seal, which is found in about e\ery part of the Arctic ! that man has ponetrated, and at about all seasons of the year. The greater amount of fatty tissue in the animals of the sea makes them more acceptable as food to the northerner, whose system craves such diet during the rigorous winter of that zone. The seal and walrus are fat throughout the year although varying appreciably in this respect during the different seasons, while the reindeer — for musk oxen are nowhere numerous enough to enter largely as food — are only in good condition for a few months in the fall and early winter, the coldest months in the year, January February and March, often finding them livid in their leanness. Yet, in spite of a'l this, my northern travels threw me in contact with, a fair sized tribe of Eskimo that lived largely on this kind of meat, catching only enough seal from an inlet that cut deep into their country to supply their stone lamps with a Uttle light during the long dark winter night. Those living on seal and walrus had enough oil to warm their houses — though made of snow — many degrees higher than the intense cold outside, and would take off their outside suit of reindeer clothes when in the house, while the reindeer hunters seldom had a temperature even a little above that of the atmosphere outside, and often remained double clothed as if in the open. Their homes were pold and cheerless in the extreme, but they had powers of ros^sting it that soemed phenomenal and far beyond human endurance as we have found it limited in our own zone. I have known one of these cold weather cavaliers to take a reindeer hide that had been soaking in fche water, and that was frozen as stiff as a plate of boiler iron, and put it against his bare body, hpldjng it there, not only unbjlit was thawed out, but until it was perfectly dry. The skin iyas to be used as a drum head for singing and dancing exercises, and had to be dry and hairless to answer that purpose, the soaking ridding it ol the hair, whileiihere were apparently no other means of drying it than the heroic method adopted. From the large number of reindeer killed by these Eskimo they are abundantly supplied with skins for bedding and blotting, and in the making up of these necessaries they have displayed so much tact and talent with the limited means 'at' hand that they are the besfdressed natives' in the north. — Frederick' &. Sohwftbka'in l American Magazine.'