228 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



Of course, in such a climate, the hands need to be well pro- 

 tected, and 'they have first-rate gloves and mittens. The gloves 

 are always made of dressed deer-skin, with the hair-side in, and 

 usually have a fringe of wolverine fur round the wrists. They 

 are specially meant for dress occasions, and are often tastefully 

 ornamented. The common, every -day mittens are made of thick 

 deer-skin, and are always worn with the hair next the hand. Both 

 men and women, particularly the women, when they have no work 

 to do that requires both hands, have a great habit of wearing only 

 one mitten, and drawing the other hand back through the sleeve 

 inside the jacket for warmth. 



In very cold weather, particularly when hunting or traveling, 

 they wear very thick mittens made of the shaggy hide of the polar 

 bear. These keep the hands very warm, and one of these mittens 

 held upon the windward side of the face makes a capital screen 

 against the sharp wind. The long, harsh hair, too, makes a first- 

 rate brush for dusting off frost and snow from the clothes, and 

 for brushing up the floor. "When hunting with the rifle in winter, 

 the hunter wears a pair of thin deer-skin gloves under his mit- 

 tens. Then, when he is ready for a shot, he slips off his clumsy 

 mittens, and can handle his gun without burning his fingers on 

 the cold iron. 



Of course, all these clothes are made by the women, who cut 

 them out by their eye very skillfully, using their favorite tool, a 

 broad knife shaped like a chopping-knif e, which they use for cut- 

 ting everything, from their food to a thread. This is better than 

 scissors for cutting furs, because in cutting from the skin-side 

 you cut the skin without cutting the hair. 



For sewing skins they make their own thread by stripping 

 fibers from a piece of dried sinew, but use nowadays steel needles 

 and common brass thimbles. They do not sew as a white woman 

 does, but wear the thimble on the forefinger and thrust the needle 

 through from left to right. In old times their needles were made 

 from the small bones of the reindeer's legs, and they used thim- 

 bles made of a bit of sealskin, in the shape of a ring with a pad 

 on one side to press against the needle. 



The great time for making new clothes is in October and No- 

 vember, which are named in the Eskimo calendar " the time for 

 sewing" and the "second time for sewing/' All summer long 

 they have been living in tents and knocking round outdoors, and 

 their clothes have grown pretty shabby and dirty. Now they 

 have come back for the winter, and the time has come to make 

 new clothes. But deer-skin clothes must not be made in the vil- 

 lage while the hunters are out after seals, for that would bring 

 bad luck ; so the women take their work out into little tents 

 pitched some distance from the houses. 



