130 CHILDREN— OUT-OF-DOOR LIFE. 



from the usual diet of fish, otherwise so universal and abundant. 

 The women stay at home mostly and keep things in order there ; 

 cooking the meals which usually consists of the most simple fare : 

 bread with or without butter (some use lard for butter), rarely a 

 piece of pork, and tea of the usual kind called black or breakfast. 

 The main stand-by is either codfish or herring with an occasional 

 mackerel ; while the red berry and baked apple form excellent pre- 

 serves. The grandmother or the grandfather, of course, does 

 little but exist, so to speak, though the former keeps the family sup- 

 plied with good warm knit stockings, and makes and mends boots. 

 This may seem a queer statement, but one has only to consider that 

 the boots here are very different articles from what are obtained 

 in the "States," as the people here say, and that they are made 

 after the Esquimaux pattern, of sealskin, and with soft tops and 

 bottoms, to be convinced of the fact. 



The children are, as I have said before, a constant source of dis- 

 turbance, and they with the dogs are always under foot ; if it is 

 not one, it is the other, and more often it is both. They grow up 

 together and fight together ; all at once the child becomes large 

 enough to be of use, and then he or she is up for himself or 

 herself, and is either ordered about by the women inside to attend 

 to such duties as they are able, or by the men outside to help them. 

 The dogs are a mongrel half breed. They fight all the time, and 

 eat anything that they can get hold of, from leather, or rather seal- 

 skin, which is used in the place of leather, to meat in its most 

 putrid condition. 



The out-of-door hfe and surroundings of the people are neither 

 varied nor peculiar, and they live here much as such a class of people 

 do in other climates, dressing to suit the season, and paying very 

 little attention to their appearance, except during holidays or Sun- 

 days which are scrupulously regarded ; the latter, by simply keeping 

 the day — for in winter it is usually impossible to get to church, and 

 in summer it depends upon the wind, unless they live too far away, 

 as to whether they can get there at all — on holidays by dressing in 

 their best, and having a good time, a dance, or a shooting match ; 



