262 HUNTING WITH THE ESKIMOS 



a comfortable position. Such parts of the boxes of 

 which the shack was built that could be broken off 

 without destroying the building itself, were utilized 

 as fuel to help out our diminishing stock of oil. 



Our fresh meat had dwindled away until now only 

 two legs of a hare remained. I devoted myself to 

 hunting, but hares were so wild and scarce that as a 

 result of several days' effort I killed but one. 

 While on one of these hunting expeditions I was 

 walking without snow-shoes over the crust-covered 

 top of a very deep drift, when without warning I 

 broke through and sank to my armpits, my legs 

 jammed so that for a time I could not move them, 

 and the more I struggled to release myself the deeper 

 I sank. After a long time, and when nearly ex- 

 hausted, I succeeded in extricating myself, but I had 

 experienced a narrow escape from burial alive in the 

 snow, and learned the lesson never to cross deep drifts, 

 no matter how hard a covering of crust they ap- 

 peared to have, without snow-shoes. These drifts 

 were from ten to twenty feet in depth, and one might 

 easily have sunk so deep in them that escape would 

 have been impossible without assistance. 



On two occasions during this period I observed re- 

 markable meteorological phenomena worthy of men- 

 tion. One a gorgeous sunset, the predominating 

 color of which was dark purple with constantly vary- 

 ing shades. The sky colorings were unlike those of 

 any sunset I had ever before seen, and the changing 

 shades lent it a marvelous beauty quite beyond the 

 power of description. 



