196 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Sept. 



twenty inclies in heiglit, is from 60° to 80° Fahrenlieit. 

 Naturally when the house is crowded much of the 

 warmth is radiated heat from the bodies of the people. If 

 you want it any warmer, bring in another Eskimo! 

 Here the little children tumble and roll and laugh in 

 the warm skins, unencumbered with any clothes what- 

 ever. The unembarrassed lady of the house herself sits 

 sewing or chewing the sole of a boot, cross-legged, be- 

 side her soapstone lamp, clad only in a much-abbreviated 

 pair of foxskin trousers; her body surprisingly white 

 in spite of the fact that she has not washed it for the 

 last forty years! Faces and hands, however, are regu- 

 larly wiped with the fat-absorbing birdskins. 



When I left North Greenland in 1909, I presented to 

 In-ah-loo, a fat, good-natured dame, one inch of a 

 Williams shaving-soap stick. Upon my return, four 

 years later, with marked pride she dug from the bot- 

 tom of a sealskin bag the same inch! She liked to 

 smell of it! 



To a white man the odor of an unwashed Eskimo is 

 unmistakable and well pronounced. To an Eskimo the 

 smell of a washed white man is just as pronounced, 

 and probably just as disagreeable. It is simply the 

 question of a choice of perfumes. Strange to say, after 

 a few weeks' contact with these primitive children of the 

 far North, that all-pervading and once offensive odor is 

 indistinguishable; it has become commonplace, and 

 ceases to notice. Or has the olfactory nerve, discouraged 

 by such a constant load, given up in despair .^^ 



On the 16th Jot and the Eskimos, in our sailing-dory, 

 rowed to the head of the fiord for a load of grass. This 

 is never cut, but is pulled and broken close to the ground. 

 Megishoo, oldest daughter of Oo-bloo-ya, stood on the 



