THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 371 



he had come through that very district without seeing any signs, 

 which had disappointed him greatly. 



The other two families of Kullak's party were a little farther 

 north but they all intended to visit us at Kellett later in the year. 

 They told me great stories of the wonders they had seen at Kellett 

 and of the kindness and hospitality of our people, but they also 

 marveled at their lack of intelligence in certain lines. They told as 

 an extraordinary thing that our people used to go long distances 

 from camp with guns to get a few geese. They had, they said, vol- 

 unteered to show them how to get geese and had gone a short dis- 

 tance and driven a flock of moulting geese down to the camp where 

 they had been killed. Captain Bernard later told us that they had 

 gone about five miles and driven about five hundred geese like a 

 flock of sheep right down to the house. 



Kullak gave it as his opinion that our people had been living on 

 very inferior food and had been almost starving until he and his 

 party showed them how to get geese. Having found the party 

 without meat he could not conceive that the other food which they 

 were eating instead was anything but an emergency ration. His 

 own people never eat roots or berries in any quantity unless they 

 are starving and seldom even taste them, and his inference was, 

 therefore, eminently natural. 



As we were about to leave Kullak's camp he came to me with a 

 daintily made pair of white sealskin slippers which he wanted to 

 give me. When I asked him the reason he said that his wife ex- 

 pected the birth of a baby in a few days and he wanted me to see to 

 it that she would have easy delivery and that the child should be 

 a boy. 



This was one of the least pleasant incidents that ever befell me 

 among the Eskimos. I saw every urKJomfortable possibility. Kul- 

 lak had not the slightest doubt that I could by magical means con- 

 trol the birth both as to its safety and the sex of the child. If the 

 childbirth turned out difficult or if the sex was other than male, 

 there would be no explaining to him that anything but ill-will on my 

 part was at the bottom of it. On the other hand, if I refused the 

 present he would assume my ill-will from that moment and would 

 equally blame me for whatever went wrong. Accordingly, I could 

 do nothing but accept the slippers and promise that everything would 

 be according to his desires. 



As soon as we were away I explained the situation to my com- 

 panions who saw nothing serious in it. But when we got to Kellett 



