CHAPTER IX 



MAKING A SLEDGE MY FIRST SLEDGE JOURNEY 



AS soon as the winter was fairly established I 

 jLX began to think of visiting some of the other 

 stations by sledge. With this idea in mind I 

 consulted Jerry and Julius, the two men who made 

 it their business to fetch our drinking water, and 

 asked them about a sledge. There was a respectable- 

 looking sledge about the premises, a year or two old, 

 maybe, but good enough for us to take on our 

 occasional trips about the bay, and I asked the men 

 whether this would do for a trip to Hebron. 



They were unanimous and very emphatic. 

 " Piungitoarluk " (it is awfully bad), they said, and 

 besought me to let them make me a good sledge. 

 " Very well," I told them, " you shall make me a good 

 sledge, and I will take you with me to Hebron." 

 They were delighted, beaming and chuckling with 

 glee, and could hardly be persuaded to finish filling 

 the water tanks, so eager were they to be at work on 

 the new sledge. They were prepared to take the 

 whole thing in hand, from start to finish, and next 

 morning were off to the woods at daybreak in search 

 of a big, straight tree for the runners. I happened to 

 tell the storekeeper about their objections to the old 

 sledge, and he, being a man well used to the ways oi 

 the Eskimos, smiled rather broadly. " The sledge is 

 not so bad," he said ; " our postman carried the mail* 



to Nain with it last week ; but the postman mad< 



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