SEALSKIN CLOTHES AND BOOTS 



that I always got a decent fit when I let the women 

 do the work in their own way, and Juliana explained 

 it easily enough. "Some women," she said, "take 

 up more in the sewing than others, and some are 

 not used to patterns. Now I will make you some 

 good boots " ; and without pattern or measure, or 

 anything else beyond her bare word, away she trotted, 

 and in a few days brought me the best pair of boots 

 I ever had. The long and short of it is that boot- 

 making is an art, and the women take it seriously. 



Whenever I went into an Eskimo house I found 

 the women and girls chewing something. I imagined 

 | at first that they were eating, or chewing reindeer 

 ears (which they cut up into a sort of native chewing 

 gum) ; but no, they were softening the edges of 

 the boot-leather for the needle. An Eskimo boot 

 is made in only three pieces the legging, the tongue 

 or instep, and the turned-up, trough-like sole: the 

 bootmaker cuts them out, and hands them round to 

 be chewed. Eskimo teeth are made for the chewing ; 

 they meet edge to edge instead of overlapping as 

 'ours do; and the chewing of the boot-leather is 

 iwoman's work from one end of life to the other. 

 iLittle children who have hardly cut their teeth, 

 bid women who are too feeble and blind to do any- 

 thing else, sit mumbling and chewing ; chewing on 

 jthrough life until they can chew no more, or until 

 'they have to say, as an old woman once said to me, 

 * I can no longer chew : my teeth are worn away : 

 I am old." And so, through the (to me) mysterious 

 processes of measuring and chewing and sewing, I 

 got my Eskimo boots. 



And with the freezing of the sea there begins, 

 :oo, the real Labrador cold not the bleak, biting 



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