PASSAGE THROUGH THE ICE 73 



for the natives, and everything is used, the meat and " mugtook " 

 for food, and when the winter comes, with cold and darkness, 

 the blubber will light and warm their huts. 



Otherwise the Eskimos, as a rule, do not profit by their 

 intercourse with the whalers, although they have now become 

 dependent on them. In former days these people could live, 

 and live well, on the products of the country, but now they 

 must have flour, sugar, and tea ; nay, even butter, canned fruit, 

 and bacon have become almost necessities of life. In the 

 summer they are all dressed in white men's clothing, their 

 tents are white men's manufacture, they have white men's 

 stoves, and use white men's blankets. 



However, these people do not only buy necessities of life, but 

 also accordions and gramophones, which at present sound from 

 almost every tent. They have watches, and those with fancy 

 brass cases are in high demand. They pay exorbitant prices 

 for them, and only few of the happy owners have any idea of 

 the time of the day. 



But it is not so much the articles they have which are 

 objectionable as the price they pay for them. An Eskimo will 

 give all he has to possess a thing which takes his fancy, and 

 often the results of a whole year's work will go to buy some 

 absolutely unnecessary article. 



The greatest harm, however, was done in days gone by, when 

 fifty or sixty vessels, each with a crew of thirty-five to forty-five 

 men, were whaling off Point Barrow and every night anchored 

 outside the village. There were no Revenue Cutters then, no 

 missionaries, and no white men, except those who wanted to 

 cheat the natives and would use any means to buy a fox skin 

 or a pound of whalebone from them. 



Bad whisky was sold right and left ; the village went " on 

 the spree " from the time the fleet came until it went away. 

 Their women, wives or daughters, were given over to the 

 whalers, who demoralized them, letting them live an easy life, 

 feeding them on good white men's food, dressing them (accord- 

 ing to Eskimo fashion) in expensive clothes, and, worst of all, 

 spreading diseases amongst them diseases that ruined the 

 health of the race and thus in course of time depopulated large 

 villages. The Eskimos from villages where the whalers did 

 not stop concentrated around the centres of life, left their 



