424 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



in. I tried to reassure him, but nothing would do but he must get 

 up and examine the roof to see that it was firm and not about to 

 collapse. Several times during the night either Palaiyak or I 

 noticed that Emiu was awake and in the morning when we ques- 

 tion him he owned up to having slept scarcely a wink. That morn- 

 ing I suggested he had better climb up on the house and satisfy 

 himself that it would not break down. He thought it would be 

 better to pack up our cooking gear and cover up the bedding before 

 he did so for fear the roof might break in. Palaiyak and I then 

 climbed on the roof and were finally able to persuade Emiu to join 

 us. Thereafter he was convinced of the safety of the snowhouse 

 and enthusiastic about learning how to build one. But he was not 

 very ingenious at it and somehow failed to grasp the principle. He 

 was a persistent chap, however, and when we were traveling spent 

 hours while the rest of us were within doors in building houses 

 that invariably collapsed before the dome was finished. It was 

 after Christmas before he succeeded in building his first real house. 



One of my main concerns was to try to get two or three families 

 of these people to come and live at our ship. It was for ethnolog- 

 ical purposes I wanted them — to become thoroughly familiar with 

 their language and to win their confidence so that they would dis- 

 cuss the more intimate things about their religion and customs. 

 But I found it impossible to engage any one. 



They all gave but one reason: that they knew that in the part 

 of the straits where we were wintering seals were not common, 

 and that they were so used to living on seals in winter that they 

 did not care to live on anything else. We suggested that we might 

 be able to kill enough caribou for them to live on caribou meat. 

 This they said would be agreeable to them but they had little 

 faith in our being able to get enough in that vicinity, seeing that the 

 only district anywhere near where caribou were at all numerous 

 in winter was, in their opinion, Banks Island across the straits to 

 the west of us. They were deferential about our ability as hunters, 

 saying that doubtless we could kill caribou when they could not, 

 but that unless we had special means for seeing them it would soon 

 be so dark that with unaided eyesight caribou would be hard to 

 discover. On the whole, there was not enough probability of our 

 securing meat for them to make them willing to come and live 

 with us. I offered wages which must have appeared fabulous to 

 them. For one thing, I made it clear that we would not sell a 

 rifle to any of them for any price, but that I would give one rifle 

 to each family that would spend the entire winter in the vicinity 



