A SEALSKIN JACKET AT HOME 285 



was ocean all about me — then 1 would hear their honk 

 below, different in key from the roar of the Sea Lion." 



'' Aren't tliey awfully nerce beasts to meet?" asked 

 Kap. 



'' Tlie}^ look fierce, and when killed with spear or 

 harpoon may give the whaler or Eskimo some scars 

 or crush him by rolling their ton weight on him, in 

 their terror to get back from land to sea. But that 

 is all, and hoAV can such a piece of clumsiness long es- 

 cape extermination if he is hunted persistently with 

 the rifle?" 



'^ Are they good for much ? " asked Nat. " Of course 

 you couldn't use that ugly skin to make fur coats, and 

 daddy says that the oil from wells in the ground is 

 easier to get nowadays tlian animal oil." 



^'We could do without them well enough, but they 

 mean food and clothes, heat, light, and life itself to the 

 poor Eskimos. Even with the Walrus, life to them is 

 not easy; without him it means awful, slow starvation. 

 Listen to what the Walrus gives. First of all, his 

 coarse meat is the Eskimos' beef, their only change 

 from fish, for many of them live out of the range of 

 Bear meat and dare not venture through the Barren 

 Grounds for the Musk (Jx. Walrus meat is eaten fresh 

 and also packed away as food, for all the 3^ear. Its oil 

 gives him liglit and fuel also in that treeless land." 



" Oh, then the Eskimos have oil stoves, the same as 

 we do ! " cried Dodo. " I w^onder if they make the 

 choky, smoky smell that the one does in daddy's dress- 

 room ? " 



They burn the oil without the stove, and the smoky 

 smell is very, very large," said Olaf, spreading his 



