WINTER QUARTERS 141 



is dancing, courting, and play; but when the sun is away, 

 gloom settles over land and sea, life is hard, every morsel of 

 food costs hard work, and people freeze and starve while waiting 

 for the sun to return. 



Fiedler and Ned's boys did not return, and after the lapse of 

 several days I began to feel homesick for the vessel, though 

 Ned himself was a very nice fellow, 

 and Ekajuak, his wife, did everything 

 in her power to make my stay in 

 her house as pleasant as possible. 

 But sitting about a whole day and 

 doing nothing except talking about 

 future plans will become tiresome in 

 the long run. We often went out for 

 a walk, and on one of these walks we 

 went over to the sand-spit at Barter 

 Island to look at the numerous remains 

 of a once powerful but now extinct 

 Eskimo tribe. Or we walked up 

 the river to have a look at the fox EKAJUAK. 



traps, which was, however, not very 



exciting, as it was too early in the year for foxes to run, and we 

 hardly ever saw even a trace of one. Then we would return 

 to Ned's house to eat bread and beans, smoke a while, lie down 

 to sleep, and play solitary games. Ekajuak was always busy. 

 She sat on the floor at one end of the house, mending or 

 making clothes for her large family, or tidying up the two 

 smallest children. When the evening fell we lit our only 

 kerosene lamp, which made an attempt to light up the large log 

 house, but only succeeded in the immediate neighbourhood of 

 the lamp itself, leaving the corners dark. The children were 

 fighting or playing, laughing or crying, until they were put to bed, 

 and Ned and I resumed the game of " Idiot's delight." This 

 was the ordinary routine of the day, but we spent much time in 

 walking up and down on a large snowdrift outside the house, 

 discussing every possible subject between heaven and earth. 



While eating our supper, beans and bread as usual, on 

 January 8, the long absent party drove into camp, and we made 

 ready to start for home on the following day. But to our intense 

 dismay a perfect blizzard from the west sprang up during the night, 



