FROM FLAXMAN ISLAND TO ICY CAPE 355 



large herd of domesticated reindeer, at least two hundred, all 

 belonging to a young native, an unmarried man, the best match 

 in the country. Many were the mothers who schemed to bring 

 their daughters in his way ; but further down the coast he had 

 a sweetheart, and from the instructions he gave me regarding a 

 letter to her I understood at once that it must have been a very 

 tender epistle he entrusted to my keeping. Later on, when I 

 saw the girl, I understood quite well why he had chosen her, a 

 poor orphan, though far better matches had offered closer at 

 hand, for the girl was one of the most perfectly built Eskimo 

 women I ever saw ; she was pretty and kind, she loved him 

 dearly, and blushed whenever we teased her about him. She 

 was now learning to keep house in European fashion ; she could 

 wash and sew, bake bread and raise it with yeast ; so upon the 

 whole our young Eskimo might have fared far worse. 



The moon was very good to us. Every night it shone with 

 remarkable brilliancy from the clear sky and made travelling a 

 pure delight, lengthened our days indefinitely, and almost 

 turned the Arctic night into day. 



The places we stopped at were usually not very roomy, and 

 numbers of natives, who took advantage of the moonlight for 

 travelling, were found in every house and took up every square 

 inch of room. But the rule " Where there is heartroom there is 

 also houseroom" holds good here, and, even if we were much 

 crowded, no one was ever sent away. 



One night in Pearl Bay I stopped at a small house only 9 by 

 18 and 5 feet high. There were eight grown-up people in it 

 when I drove up with my Eskimo friend, and the place looked 

 very crowded. I asked the owner whether he had room for us ; 

 he grinned, they all grinned,* and asked where I was going to 

 sleep if not in the house, and the fellow fired off his only English 

 words, " Me savy, him plenty room." That settled it ; I was 

 squeezed in between two other people, and when at last we were 

 arranged as well as possible, the owner and his wife pressed 

 themselves into a corner, where they remained sitting all night. 

 Such is hospitality in the Arctic. 



Next morning we had to turn out when the cooking com- 

 menced, as our sleeping gear would otherwise have been more 

 or less burned by the hot stove, on which a big potful of seal 

 meat with flour was being cooked for us. We all ate out of 



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