AND KAYAK 175 



not bother much about the baby if there are 

 big sisters to look after it. 



If there is no baby to be nursed, the girls 

 play with dolls. I suppose there have been 

 dolls among the Eskimos from time immemorial 

 dolls of stone or bone, scraped and scrubbed 

 into shape with hard flint stones ; dolls of 

 wood, with wide-eyed, staring faces, carved 

 after the Eskimo cast with high cheekbones 

 and broad, flat noses ; and dolls nondescript, 

 mere bundles of rags, or rather of sealskin 

 scraps, tied with thongs at the waist and neck, 

 and with features only visible to the fond 

 little make-believe mother. 



Some of the little girls are the proud owners 

 of flaxen-haired dollies from the English shops, 

 but most of them have to be content with the 

 native article, whittled from a stick of fire 

 wood by a fond father ; but whatever sort 

 of a dolly it be, the little mother dresses it in 

 Eskimo clothes. 



I have seen the children sitting on the floor, 

 planning and chattering, cutting out clothes 

 for their dolls after the unchanging Eskimo 

 pattern, making dickys and trousers with a 

 due eye to the economy of cloth, and learning, 

 all unconsciously, to cut and make the real 

 clothes. By daytime the doll is an Eskimo 

 baby, poked feet first into its little mother s 



