38 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



an event. The central item in any such equipment, in my opinion, 

 should be the skin-boat. If a ship is crushed by rapidly moving and 

 tumbling ice floes in the summer, a retreat from her with any equip- 

 ment may become dangerous. But if she is broken in winter, then the 

 process of breaking up is fairly sure to be slow, giving ample time 

 to place on reasonably stable ice in the vicinity any equipment that 

 one cares to save. The crew of the Karluk would be about thirty, 

 and a typical skin-boat will carry about that many people. Ac- 

 cordingly I purchased an umiak and planned that in case of danger 

 it would be the first thing saved and placed on the ice. If the wreck 

 of the ship occurred in winter the umiak would be put on a low 

 sledge, which I also bought for the purpose, and hauled towards shore 

 over the ice either by men or by dogs. As shown in the adjoining il- 

 lustrations, we frequently travel with such a boat hauled by five or 

 six dogs and carrying inside of it all the camp equipment of the party. 

 And along with this boat I wanted Hadley, who through much 

 experience was not only a master in the handling of skin-boats 

 but knew how to make and repair them. Of course our Eskimos 

 were familiar with these things, but their knowledge would not be 

 so useful in a party of white men as the knowledge of a man like 

 Hadley, who had also the ability to explain and, if necessary, to 

 command. The boat and Hadley were therefore taken partly as 

 insurance against a by no means improbable breaking of our ship. 



We spent two days very pleasantly as guests of Mr. Brower at his 

 station. After nay purchases for the ship's use had been made, I bought 

 some Eskimo ethnological specimens and in particular a clay pot which 

 Mr. Brower had been able to secure for me. Although on previous expe- 

 ditions I had dug up bushels of fragments of clay pots, I had found no 

 unbroken specim.en. In view of the fact that some authorities have 

 doubted that the Eskimos of northern Alaska made clay pots at all 

 and in view of their rarity in any event, this was something of a prize. 

 Another remarkable specimen was a lip button, or labret, made of "Amer- 

 ican jade" (jadite). This beautiful stone is one of the toughest and 

 least workable, and still the ancient Eskimos made adzes, knives and 

 ornaments of it. 



The custom of wearing lip buttons, like any other fashion with which 

 we are not familiar, seems to us strange and possibly grotesque. Ac- 

 cording to tradition, the Eskimo women vised to wear them, but in 

 historic times they have been used only by the men. It is said the 

 women had one perforation in the middle of the lower lip. If that is so, 

 their method of wearing them was the same as that of the Indians of 

 southern Alaska. But the Eskimo men have two holes pierced in the 

 lower lip, one below each corner of the mouth. 



