STARTING THE HOSPITAL 



After that I thought it well to dig into the depths 

 of the grammar book, and I found that " siut " or 

 "siumik" literally means "something used for." 

 That made it plain " something used for toothache." 

 As if to make things more interesting, within the 

 next day or two I heard somebody talking about 

 " Sontage-siumik," meaning his " Sunday clothes " : 

 but more was to follow, for a sledge driver came to 

 ask if I had " silla-siumik " (weather medicine) ! This 

 was a puzzler ; but the man's restless eyes, roaming 

 over my walls, finally fixed their gaze on the baro- 

 meter, and I discovered that he wanted to know 

 what the " silla-siut " (thing used for the weather) 

 had to say about to-morrow's weather prospects ! 



But it was not all humour at my nine o'clock 

 hour : never a day passed without its touches of 

 pathos, and sometimes of tragedy, too. The Eskimos 

 are very brave when there is pain to be borne, and 

 there are many instances of their endurance written 

 in the books at Okak Hospital. I remember how old 

 Rebekah came one day, nursing a wounded hand. She 

 is one of the stateliest of the village grandmothers, an 

 active old woman of sixty-five, with her teeth nearly 

 worn to the gums ; but, old as she is, she is well able 

 to take an oar in a boat or a pair, for the matter of 

 that and thinks nothing of trudging to and from 

 the woods, five miles away, to fetch broken branches 

 to replenish her stove. With proper Eskimo dignity 

 she came in and sat down, and composed herself to 

 tell her tale ; and all the while she was hugging her 

 left hand, swathed in a red bandanna handkerchief. 



" I was making boots just now," she said, " and 

 the leather-knife slipped and cut my thumb. Ai-ai, 

 it bled very much, and it was nearly cut off; but I 



267 



