THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 425 



of the ship. Although this was a great temptation, they decided 

 after consultation that even a rifle would not pay for the privation. 

 They believed that they could not keep their health on the sort 

 of food we had at the ship and that their strength of will v/ould 

 not enable them to force themselves to eat our food even if it were 

 wholesome and nourishing. 



Here I left the argument to my two Eskimo companions, who 

 explained that formerly the Alaska and Mackenzie River Eskimos 

 had been equally averse to white men's diet but that they had found 

 by experience that white men's food was wholesome and agree- 

 able and that it was no hardship to live on it. Emiu could say 

 this in good faith, for he was really habituated to white men's diet. 

 Palaiyak said it also in his enthusiasm to convert these distant 

 cousins of his, but it was not quite true with him, for he was never 

 happy unless he had a little fresh meat each day. The local Es- 

 kimos remained unconverted by all these arguments, concluding 

 merely that the Mackenzie Eskimos must be very different from 

 themselves if they could live on white men's food. 



Of the people I was now dealing with about half had visited 

 Captain Klinkenberg's ship when he wintered near Bell Island 

 on southwest Victoria Island in 1905-06, and most of the same 

 ones with a few in addition had visited Captain Mogg's ship, of 

 which our Levi was then steward, at Walker Bay the winter 1907- 

 08. Nearly all, with about twenty exceptions, had seen Natkusiak 

 and me in 1911. This was the full extent of their association with 

 white men except that (as mentioned above) one very old man, 

 Pammiungittok, had as a boy of five or six visited Collinson in 

 Walker Bay in 1852, and another had seen Hanbury in 1899 near 

 Baker Lake. 



The experience upon which was based the uniform opinion that 

 our diet was unsuitable for the health and well-being of Eskimos 

 and that they would never learn to like it, was that of a few who 

 had tasted food on board either Klinkenberg's or Mogg's ship. 

 The two men who had overtaken us on the road were especially 

 emphatic, having tried the food of our party at Cape Kellett the 

 previous summer. They said not one item had been found that 

 was agreeable. They were very polite and deferential about all 

 this. They had about the same opinion of our food that the ordi- 

 nary white man has of the food of the Eskimos, but their ideas 

 of courtesy towards strangers would not permit them to express their 

 revulsion as violently as we express similar feelings when discuss- 

 ing the food and food tastes of a strange people. They were care- 



