40 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE 



Those old missionaries had heard of the north- 

 west wind. It is almost a proverb ; " Attuarnek," 

 the Eskimos call it. 



It is an inconceivable thing ; to imagine it is im- 

 possible ; you must see it, hear it, feel it. It comes 

 from the frozen plains and valleys of the north-west, 

 storming along with one ceaseless roar and filling 

 the world with snow. No living thing can face it. 

 Wooden buildings shake and sway, and even move 

 from their foundations ; snow houses quiver and are 

 frayed thin ; travellers are lost. I journeyed by 

 sledge one day after such a storm, in freezing, 

 bracing, sunlit air, under a cloudless blue sky. The 

 snowy floor was driven hard as stone, and the village 

 we reached was lamenting the loss of one of its 

 young men. Man, sledge, dogs, all were lost ; not a 

 sign could be found, though search-parties were 

 everywhere. Weeks later, when the snows began to 

 melt, a chance traveller saw a poor, pathetic hand 

 above the snow ; and there, beneath the frozen floor, 

 lay the man with his sledge and his dogs caught 

 and buried by the awful storm. 



So, if life was to be possible, a sheltered spot 

 must be found. Again, the old heathen village-slope 

 would do, for it lay beneath the shelter of a rocky 

 wall. 



And a fourth thing, a stream of running water. 



This was, above all things, necessary, for while 

 Eskimos seem able to drink melted snow, fresh spring 

 water is necessary for the health of folks from other 

 lands. But the heathen village on the hillside had 

 no running stream ; nothing other than the snow or 



