CHAPTER XVIII 



FUR-TRAPPING A NEW YEAR'S GODSEND THE REINDEER HUNT 



NO sooner is one hunting season over than 

 another begins ; or, to be more exact, there 

 is always hunting to be done of one sort or another, 

 and sometimes two sorts at a time. 



I thought that perhaps the men would be rather 

 idle after the sledges came home for Christmas, wait- 

 ing for the sea-ice to harden right out to the edge ; 

 but there is very little idleness in an Eskimo hunter's 

 life. Sometimes I have gone into one of the huts 

 in the daytime, and while the hunter was taking 

 his well-earned rest between his morning tramp to 

 the traps and his strenuous afternoon of wood- 

 chopping, I have stepped across his sleeping figure 

 to watch his wife stretching a fox-skin upon a 

 wooden shape, and have seen the pot of fox-flesh 

 stewing over the stove, ready for a feast when 

 father should wake up ; and the mother has put 

 down her scraper and wiped her hands and turned 

 the skin with careful fingers, to show me the 

 lovely fur of a white or red or even a silver fox, 

 and then has gently turned it back and taken up 

 her scraper to plod slowly and cautiously on at 

 the work she has to do to get the skin ready for 

 market, her eyes gleaming as she thought of the 

 dollars and dollars that that skin meant, and of 

 all the food and clothing and even luxuries that 

 those dollars would buy a new roof for the house, 



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