92 Out North Land. 



description. Great heaps of blubber, seal or walrus fat were lying 

 along the sides, while at one end the bed of skins on the rocks 

 generally supported from two or three to half a dozen women and 

 children, lounging in a half nude state, unwashed, uncombed, and 

 unconcerned. The women were sometimes leisurely sewing on 

 moccasins, jackets or other skin garments. In one of the tents we 

 met with a very aged woman. She was haggard, grey, bald, 

 wrinkled, decrepid, rickety, cross, dirty, half blind, half naked, 

 toothless, with finger nails nearly an inch and a-half long, skinny, 

 half crazy, unable to walk, out of patience, talkative, and unhappy. 

 She was probably seventy years of age, and will soon leave all that 

 is mortal of her to be frozen, and bleached, and dried and decayed 

 upon the rocks. 



In the same tent was a little child — there are often representa- 

 tives of three generations dwelling in one hut — -just old enough to 

 toddle around, with her dirty black hair long enough to hang down 

 over her black eyes and dirty face, with her one scanty garment of 

 deer skin, and with her hands and face covered with blood. This 

 child was a scene to be pitied, perhaps, but for us, to be laughed at. 

 She was half sitting on a rock, with one hand newly dipped in a 

 dish of "stone partly filled with mixed seal-oil and blood. She had 

 been eating the raw flesh from the carcase of a seal, and drinking 

 this mixture of blood and oil ; and, child-like, she was bedaubed with 

 it in such a way as to indicate that her appetite was good and that 

 she had not yet been trained in the art of eating, as she probably 

 never will be. 



The men generally do the trading when they are at hand, and 

 will foolishly part with anything they have, not only skins but 

 spears, lances, harpoons, hooks, fish-spears, or anything, for tobacco' 

 powder, shot, gun-caps, knives, etc. Most of the men have guns, 

 probably loaned to them, las a business stroke, by traders, and they 

 seem to be pretty well acquainted in the use of them. Besides 

 several pelts, we obtained from them one or two harpoons, and 

 various articles illustrative of their mode of life. 



