ON HERSCHEL AND FLAXMAN ISLANDS 317 



they fall to, each with a piece of meat, which they cut into 

 pieces, after carefully licking their knives and wiping- them on 

 their pantaloons. After the meal they enjoy a smoke, and while 

 the fire is burning lower and lower the people round it become 

 quieter and quieter; first one falls asleep, then another, until 

 the call from another tent that " grub's ready " brings them up 

 with a start, and they walk over there, looking very unconcerned 

 and licking their knives afresh. 



From a house the sweet music of two or three drums indicates 

 that dancing is in progress, and the stuffy house, with the 

 windows hermetically closed, is full of happy young people, who 

 are dancing as if their very lives depended upon it. Not far 

 away the voices of Melba or Caruso are sounding into the quiet 

 night, transported to these remote corners of the earth through 

 the medium of a phonograph, while a very grave and very 

 dignified crowd of "bucks" and "squaws," smoking and 

 spitting, are listening to the beautiful tones. But a rival close 

 by strikes up a coon song ; some of the crowd forming the 

 audience of the more classical music commence to prick their 

 ears, to look interested, and at last move away over there. A 

 contest begins as to which can draw the largest audience, and 

 two or more phonographs are playing alongside each other, 

 sending forth their tunes with all their might. 



In the lighted tents mothers are sitting, singing to their howl- 

 ing offspring, who object to be alone and insist upon keeping 

 their mothers near them, while in the darker places young people 

 are courting, well hidden from the eyes of the inquisitive. 



But there is a reverse side to the picture of a semi-civilized 

 Eskimo town at night, and that reverse may be seen in tents 

 where people are fighting against the death which has been 

 brought among them by white men. A deadly disease was 

 ravaging the village, and during the time I stayed there five or 

 six of the people died. In each case the sad event had been 

 expected long beforehand, and as soon as it had occurred some 

 men went out foraging for planks with which to make a coffin, 

 and when they had got the planks they worked with hammer 

 and saw, and before long they had made a rude box to contain 

 the corpse. 



The tent of the deceased is full of sympathetic people, who 

 break off their different amusements to mourn with the bereaved 



