AN ESKIMO BROTHER 77 



he has a load of meat on his sledge at the end of 

 the day. 



He is a happy man as he comes across the frozen 

 bay to his home, and many are the willing hands 

 that help his sledge up the slope to the door. There 

 is a meal of fresh meat for all the neighbours. Likely 

 enough there is a fine joint set aside as a present for 

 the missionary, and the hunter remembers the sick 

 girl on the sea-front or the lame man in the hut on 

 the hillside, and sends off a toothsome knuckle-bone 

 by the hand of a small boy. Outside the hut the dogs 

 will be busy demolishing their share, and last, but 

 far from least, parts of the best of the meat are set 

 apart for drying. This the making of nipko is 

 woman's work, and the housewife has a busy time 

 on the morning after the hunt. She cuts the meat 

 into strips and slabs of the right thickness and hangs 

 them out of doors. The dogs watch with greedy 

 eyes ; they whine and slink, but the housewife out- 

 wits them. She hangs the meat on poles, out of 

 climbing reach, and there, on the end of an oar or 

 a tent-pole, it dangles in the wind a sight to make 

 a dog's teeth water. There it hangs, exposed to all 

 weathers, blown about by the wind, scorched by the 

 sun, washed by the rain, but all the time drying 

 slowly in the clear sharp air. It shrivels and 

 blackens, and looks anything but appetising to the 

 unaccustomed, and, sooner or later, when she thinks 

 it black enough and hard enough and dry enough, 

 the good wife takes it down and pronounces it ' ' good 

 nipko," and forthwith it takes its place upon the 

 dinner-table. 



