. / Great Delicacy. 3 



is large and strong, I have but very little; and instead 

 of that, I have a large bunch of muscle on the upper 

 side of my arms, and they are crooked, so that I can 

 never straighten them. A doctor in Iceland once 

 tried to straighten one arm by pulling, but he could 

 not change it one bit; and it was very sore for a long 

 time afterward and the muscles were much swollen. 

 But it was not so with my father and brothers. They 

 went out to hunt and had more exercise and more 

 pulling to do, and so their arms were straight. 



It was a great thing when the men would come 

 home from a hunt, for then we would have a great 

 deal to talk about: — how far they went, how cold it 

 was, how they found the bear, or walrus, or seal, and 

 who was most active and brave in killing it. Father 

 would often say to mother, " Oh, how I wish you had 

 been along, for we had such a nice drink of warm 

 blood." The warm blood of a dying animal was con- 

 sidered the greatest luxury we could get, because we 

 had not any cooked food at all. We ate it all frozen 

 and raw, except when fresh from the animal. It was 

 a great thing to strike the animal first with a spear, 

 for the one who drew first blood was owner of the 

 skin and was the boss of the whole job. They just 

 had to cut it to suit him. The flesh was divided 

 equally between all the hunters. 



Sometimes we used to get very tired in the dark 

 snow-house, and then we would try a little amuse- 

 ment. Two of us would sit down on the fur carpet 

 and look into one another's faces and s^iiess i<'lio was 



