TENTS 



fishing-place and return to it year after year ; but 

 most of the people live in tents. Tents are ideal 

 summer dwellings for a people who are, at heart, 

 wanderers ; and the Eskimos are restless beings they 

 like to follow the call of their hunting, and to make 

 their temporary home where their work is. Not 

 many years ago the tents, all along the coast, were 

 of reindeer skins stitched together with sinew and 

 stretched on poles with the hairy side outward ; and 

 no doubt some of the people will live in skin tents to 

 the end, so loth are they to give up the customs of 

 their lives. 



But calico tents are becoming very popular and 



a good thing, too. They are lighter and airier than 



skin tents, and afford just as good a protection from 



the weather; but the Eskimos like them because 



they are so easily mended. If an August storm 



tears a tent to ribbons or hurls it bodily into the 



raging sea, the owner and his family have no 



I need to spend the rest of the season packed like 



! sardines on the floor of some other man's tent, 



| waiting for the next year's reindeer hunt to come 



s round before making a bid for a new one ; no, when 



1 the storm has passed, the father takes his boat and 



I hies him to the store, and spends a few dollars of his 



| fish-money on a roll of calico which his wife will very 



speedily turn into a tent. 



But even this is not the chief reason to Eskimo 

 minds. Portability is the thing ; and a tent that 

 packs up into a neat little bundle, and can be stowed 

 away in the bottom of a boat or can be used to cover 

 the load on a sledge without making the pile too 

 high and top-heavy for the passengers, is a grand 

 i thing compared with the bulky heap of reindeer skin 



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