CHAPTER X. 



ESKIMO VISITS ON BOAKD THE ' FKAM.' 



ABOUT a month after the sun had come back to us we also had 

 our first sight of human beings, since our visit from Peary. 



One forenoon, as Dr. Svendsen was walking in the neighbour- 

 hood of the ship, he saw a strange team of dogs approaching 

 through Eice Strait. It was a Greenlander, driving from the 

 south, with eight dogs to his sledge. He jumped off it when 

 he reached the ' Fram,' and greeted us in European fashion. I 

 invited him to come on board, for which he thanked me with 

 great politeness, but said he must first make his toilet. He then 

 very calmly dragged off his anorak (fox- skin coat), which 

 he wore outermost, and his timiak (bird-skin vest), which he 

 wore next the skin, and arrayed himself in a fresh timiak and 

 netsak (a vest of thin seal-skin); all in forty degrees below 

 zero a temperature which did not seem to incommode him in 

 the least. 



At dinner-time we were very curious to see what he would 

 make of a knife and fork, as well as of European food, and 

 civilization in general. He was perfectly equal to the situation, 

 however; handled his knife and fork with dexterity, and was 

 never at any juncture betrayed into astonishment. He probably 

 thought that we Europeans were capable of any enormity. 



He was on his way up to Peary's ship, the ' Windward,' to tell 

 some of his Eskimo of the drowning of several of their relations 

 when out walrus-catching. As Fosheim is going to describe 

 his visit on board, I will not trouble the reader with further 

 particulars, but will confine myself to mentioning that he was 

 a representative of the heathen Eskimo or Greenlanders who 



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