34 NATURAL HISTORY OF ARCTIC AMERICA. 



way (the skins of pregnant females and those suckling young are the 

 best), they split the skins, or rather remove a membrane that lies be- 

 tween the blubber and the skin proper. The splitting is done with the 

 woman's knife. The skin is laid upon a flat surface and the knife pushed 

 away from the operator. When the mamma is removed from the skin it 

 is treated in the same manner as the skins, stretched, and dried in the 

 sun. It is tough and transparent, and, being very oily, does not easily 

 get saturated with water. 



When the toopik is about to be raised, the skin covering is first 

 stretched out upon the rock, and the poles are pushed underneath, and 

 then raised up, stretching the cover as tightly on the poles as possible. 

 The toopik is carried with them when they go hunting in summer. 



Such habitations are of variable dimensions, regulated by the number 

 of occupants somewhat, but more by the industry of the hunter and the 

 economy of his wife, for the skins need repairing very often 5 and, as a 

 consequence, many of the more shiftless natives have extremely poor 

 shelters, patched up with dog and bear skin and old cast-away pieces of 

 canvas, which they have paid well for in serviceable seal-skins. 



Their greatest concern is to procure the poles. At present many get 

 broken oars, lance-poles, &c., from the whalers ; but still, ingeniously 

 lashed together, bone supports for the tent are yet found among them. 

 The inside arrangement of the toopik does not differ essentially from 

 that of the igloo, except it may be a little nastier as a rule and smell a 

 trifle stronger. Sometimes whale-ribs are made use of instead of poles, 

 and are very ingeniously lashed together. These were more in vogue 

 formerly, before they could procure poles from the -hips. 



We think they were perhaps less nomadic in past times, as there are 

 still extant sod foundations, which were no doubt used as permanent 

 abodes. 



At the present day, so many of the Cumberland Eskimo have pro- 

 cured some kind of firearms that their primitive modes of hunting and 

 their hunting implements have, to a great measure, been modified, and 

 even in some instances altogether lost. Bows and arrows are fast be- 

 coming an institution of the past ; they do not now rely on them for 

 killing reindeer as they did at one time. Bows and arrows are found 

 around the settlements, broken and out of repair ; the arrows, of differ- 

 ent kinds, lying about unused, or doing service as some other tool. The 

 children all have bows and arrows ; but they seldom kill larger game 

 than snowbirds and lemmings. 



