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string of skin as hair-band, bringing it from the upper part 

 of the forehead round the temples to the bacli of the neck. 

 The women almost always have their hair bound up in a string 

 of skin like a chignon or a small top. Only one little girl had 

 obtained a red band for the hair, and there did not appear to 

 be any great desire to possess coloured bands. 



The little older children were clothed in quite the same 

 way as the adults. The boys had the bearskin trousers, rea- 

 ching down to the knees, whilst the girls have the long ka- 

 mikker and the small, short foxskin trousers. The smallest 

 children seem however to wear generally a loose hood; 1 saw 

 two children with amulets round the neck, consisting of the 

 head and claws of a raven. The very small children unable to 

 walk are constantly carried in the "amaut", where they are 

 "cradled and rocked". It is only when the child has to have 

 milk that it is taken out of the back-pouch; this is done by 

 the mother leaning forward and carefully shaking the young 

 one out over the one shoulder. The youngest children are 

 suckled for a very long time; I have seen a 5 years' old boy 

 regularly taking milk at his mother's breast, but even older 

 children are said to do the same. 



Water is for the greater part of the year too costly a com- 

 modity to find any other use than drinking, so that neither the 

 children nor the older people have known what it is to be 

 washed. I have however seen a mother dry her child's dirty 

 fingers on a white gull's skin. Such is also sometimes used 

 by the grown-up people in the tent, to clean their fingers after 

 they had eaten; possibly, however, this use is of more recent 

 origin. 



In the previous pages of this chapter I have just touched 

 upon the question of the woman's work and place among the 

 Polar Eskimos. In contrast to most other hunting-peoples in 

 milder parts of the globe, where the chief occupation of the 

 woman is the collection of easily obtained objects of food, here 



