64 THE POINT HARROW ESKIMO. 



men cat by themselves. When in the (leer-hunting camps, according 

 to Lieut. Ray, they eat but little in the morning, and can really be said 

 to take no more than one full meal a day, which is eaten at night when 

 the day s work is done. 1 When on the march they usually take a few 

 moutlifuls of the pemmican above described before they start out in 

 the morning, and rarely touch food again till they go into cam]) at 

 night. 



When a family returns from the spring deer hunt with plenty of ven 

 ison they usually keep open house for a day or two. The women of the 

 household, with sometimes the assistance of a neighbor or two, keep 

 the pot continually boiling, sending in dishes of meat at intervals, 

 while the house is full of guests who stay for a short time, eating, 

 smoking, and chatting, and then retire to make room for others. Messes 

 are sometimes sent out to invalids who can not come to the feast. One 

 household in the spring of 1883 consumed in this way two whole rein 

 deer in 24 hours. They use only their hands and a knife in eating meat, 

 usually filling the month and cutting or biting oft the mouthful. They 

 are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time 

 when they have plenty, but we never saw them gorge themselves in the 

 manner described by Dr. Kane (2d Griunell Exp., passim) and other 

 writers. 



Their habits of hospitality prevent their laying up any large supply 

 of meat, though blubber is carefully saved for commercial use, and they 

 depend for subsistence, almost from day to day, on their success in 

 hunting. When encamped, however, in small parties in the summer they 

 often take more seals than they can consume. The carcasses of these, 

 stripped of their skins and blubber, are buried in the gravel close to the 

 camp, and dug up and brought home when meat becomes scarce in the 

 winter. 



The habitual drink is water, which these people constime in great 

 quantities when they can obtain it, and like, to have very cold. In the 

 winter there is always a lump of clean snow on a rack close to the lamp, 

 with a tub under it to catch the water that drips from it. This is re 

 placed in the summer by a bucket of fresh water from some pond or 

 lake. When the men are sitting in their open air clubs at the summer 

 camps there is always a bucket of fresh water in the middle of the cir 

 cle, with a dipper to drink from. Hardly a native ever passed the sta 

 tion without stopping for a drink of water, often drinking a quart of 

 cold water at a time. When tramping about in the winter they eat 

 large quantities of ice and snow, and on the march the women carry 

 small canteens of sealskin, which they till with snow and cany inside 

 of their jackets, where the heat of the body melts the snow and keeps 



1 &quot;They have no set Time for Meals, but every one eat* when lie is hungry, except when they go to 

 BOii, and then Ilieir ehief Kepa-st is ii supper after they are come home in the Evening.&quot; (Egede, Green- 

 laud, p. i:;5. Uompan; also, Crantz, vol. 1, p. 145.) 



