296 



hunting. In tlie course of the 3 months' winter-darkness there 

 is moonhght three limes, and these occasions are used in 

 paying visits to other settlements, or sledge-journeys are made 

 to bring in food from the scattered depots ; in cases of neces- 

 sity the Maupok hunting is also carried on at the breathing- 

 holes. Sometimes a wandering polar bear, scenting supplies 

 of food, may rove into the settlement, and in such a case 

 torches are lit and all join in hunting it. But, for the rest, 

 the dark period is a time of feasting, when the Polar Eskimos 

 come together, sing folk-songs and tell one another expansive 

 hunting stories and the latest news. In January 1895 Peary ^ 

 on a visit to the settlement Kràna had the opportunity of 

 participating in such a visiting and feasting period. "In the 

 evening the village was a scene of feasting. A fetid seal-feed 

 was in progress in Kardah's igloo; in Akpalisoaho's a little-auk 

 spread was laid out; and in Ingeropahdoo's another feasting 

 crowd was gathered about a large walrus-ham, which took up 

 nearly all the floor. Ootoomish and Tellikotinah, and their 

 wives, visitors from the south shore of the Sound , now on a 

 round of social visits, were making calls from igloo to igloo, 

 sampling all the feasts and gathering all the gossip." 



Fi'om the beginning of February, when the day-light again 

 appears, families from all the settlements between Cape 

 York to Inglefield Gulf start off on the journey up to the 

 coast at Cape Chalon and Cape Alexander, where the open 

 water in the middle of the North Water lies near the land and 

 a hunting lager is set up at places which may vary in different 

 years. In front of the ice-base along the land and just under 

 the bluffs the Eskimo families build their snow-houses with the 

 entrance and gut-skin windows towards the sea-ice. In the 

 latter half of March 1894 Peary- visited the hunting grounds 

 at Cape Chalon (Peterahwik) and found there over 40 snow- 



1 Northward etc. Vol. II, pp. 389—390. 

 ^ ibid. p. 419 et seq. 



