ESKIMO OF Hudson's strait. 217 



Occasionally one would be found who showed far greater genius 

 than his fellows, and here we might instance a man named Cowktooian, 

 who, by the way, had liv^ed many years on the north shore. With 

 the roughest tools he was seen to make some beautiful joints in wood 

 work, and on one occasion undertook to make the nipple of a gun, his 

 only tool being a file. He first tiled a piece of steel to the requisite 

 shape, and then grinding one point of the file to the proper size for a 

 drill made a very neat hole through it. Now, however, he was quite 

 unable to file a rough thread for the necessary screw and was obliged 

 to appeal to one of my men for aid. 



The Eskimo cannot be said to e.x.cel in the finer arts, and yet we 

 find in them the inborn love of sketching and carving, only in the 

 latter, however, are they at all proficient. Good models of kyaks, 

 animals and birds in ivory are made especially on the north side of 

 the strait, where they seem to delight in vying with one another in 

 trying to make the smallest models. The art of drawing is confined 

 almost altogether to describing figures on the level surface of the snow 

 either with a piece of stick, or, in larger figures, with their feet, and 

 in several instances most correct drawings of their own people were 

 made by slowly moving along with feet close together, raising a low 

 ridge of snow as an outline, and afterwards adding details most dex- 

 terously with one foot. 



Perspective in drawing was a great mystery, and even those who 

 had been able to look at pictures upon the wall of my house every 

 day for a year could not understand it. Involuntarily their hands 

 would steal up to the picture and slowly passing them over they would 

 feel for the objects that stood out from the background, while others 

 would shift their heads to look behind screens or doors in the picture. 



Soon after our arrival at the Obsei'vatory a coloured life sized 

 picture of a child was put up just over my bed, directly facing the 

 window. It had not been there long when hearing a great commotion 

 I went to see what was the matter and found half a dozen faces 

 pressed against the window and all were calling " chimo, chimo," 

 which is a kind of welcome, and nothing would persuade them it was 

 not real life until they had been allowed to examine it closely. 



I am now reminded of a similar incident with a crying doll, 

 several of which I had brought up as presents fur the children. A 



