HOW IV E PASSED THE WINTER. 207 



weather came on, and the molasses was 

 frozen as hard as ice, the cook used to 

 get ours in the same way that he would 

 obtain so much ice ; that is, he took a 

 hatchet and chopped out lumps of it from 

 the top of the barrel, and brought it in 

 and put it over the fire, where it soon 

 melted, so that we could use it. One 

 day he left the hatchet on the frozen 

 ' syrup, and when he needed it a few hours 

 latev, it was gone. Its disappearance 

 was a great mystery, as the Eskimo 

 never stole, and could not get into the 

 tent in any case. The mystery, how- 

 ever, was cleared up the next day, when 

 an iron bar with which he had been 

 splintering off some of the frozen mass 

 was left in the barrel, and we found that 

 it sank in the frozen syrup until only the 

 end stuck out. And when we had cut it 



