LIFE AND HISTORY OF THE ESKIMOS 



us, and I know that you will not turn. Send my comrades , 

 back ; with the aid of the compass they will be able to find land, 

 and I will go on with you so that you may not die alone." 



And Odaq continued : 

 " Then Peary looked at me with such strange sadness, and it 

 seemed to me that for the first time in all the days I had travelled 

 with him his stern eyes looked kind ; and he gave me a slap on 

 the shoulder to signify that he understood me, and answered : ' I 

 am glad, Odaq, for what you have said ; but it is not necessary. 

 To-morrow we will turn. You see, Odaq, neither have I any 

 desire to die now, for another time I shall reach the goal which 

 I must now give up.' " 



This little incident seems to me to characterize equally well i 

 Peary and the young bear-hunter, who was not afraid to sacri- 

 fice his life for his master's kingly aspirations. 



Otherwise the tales one hears are not entirely of a serious 

 nature, and nothing has been more entertaining to me during 

 the many days of bad weather, both in winter and summer, than 

 sitting listening to the Eskimos' tales of privation and danger, 

 tales which now, when gone through in memory, always end in 

 sheer fun. 



" Oh, well, that was when we were forced to eat our dogs 

 raw, far from land, right out on the ice, while our enormous 

 stores of meat were rotting at home in our camps." Little 

 finishing remarks like these contain all their wanton self- 

 mockery ; for to an Eskimo it will always seem monstrously 

 funny that one can let oneself be coaxed into leaving land, and 

 go out into the cold pressure-ice of the Polar Sea, just for 

 the sake of hewing one's ways through it, with death hovering 

 above one in the enormous, white, lifeless desert. 



It is very significant of the open-air spirit of the Eskimos, 

 and of the mind of the hunter and his obstinate ambition, that 

 a man who could look upon his suffering through a toilsome 

 voyage as something sensational, would immediately be made a 

 laughing-stock among his countrymen. When one has decided 

 on the hazards of a journey, one must take everything that 

 occurs like a man — that is, with a broad grin. I have even 



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