AND KAYAK 49 



ing water, came with .hatchets and buckets 

 and carried away lumps of broken ice to thaw. 

 One little girl used to come every day with a 

 sack on a little sled, and drag it home filled 

 with the smaller bits that other people had 

 pushed aside : it seemed a strange idea the 

 family s drinking water kept in a sack. As 

 for ourselves, we were rather more squeamish 

 than the Eskimos, who took no notice of the 

 fact that the dogs were constantly trampling 

 their chopping-place on the brook ; we sent 

 a couple of men, with an iron tank on a sled 

 and twenty dogs to pull it, across the bay to 

 the big river. They reached water by jabbing 

 a hole in the ice with a tok a sort of enormous 

 chisel with a six-foot handle and ladled it 

 out with a tin mug. By February the ice 

 on the river was eight feet thick, and they 

 had to make a pit with steps up the side : 

 one man stopped in the pit, and ladled the 

 water into buckets, while the other man 

 carried the buckets up the steps and emptied 

 them into the tank. So we got our water. 

 The men were able to bring about two hundred 

 gallons at a load, and they made it their duty 

 to keep the Mission house and hospital supplied 

 all through the winter. 



Every day we went for a walk on the frozen 

 sea, unless a blizzard was blowing, and then 



