FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE ESKIMOS 39 



cabin boy. Firth advised me to engage passage with 

 Roxy from Macpherson the 250 mile journey to Herschel 

 Island. A party of Mounted Police were going down 

 also, but they, like me, would be passengers in Roxy's 

 boat, for the Hudson's Bay Company had taken a contract 

 to transfer certain freight for the Police to Herschel 

 Island and they had sublet the job to Roxy. The evening 

 of July 30th we left Macpherson in Roxy's whaleboat. 



I now know that Eskimos have no family names. If • 

 a man's name is John you call him John, and if his wife's 

 name is Mary you call her Mary. I did not know this 

 at the time and so I noted in my diary that our party 

 consisted of the following: Captain Roxy, Mrs. Roxy and 

 their daughter Navalluk, about ten years old. Roxy 

 was a tall man, with a roman nose, skin not darker than 

 the average Italian, with black Chinese hair like all Eski- 

 mos, and no beard. Few Eskimos have beards, but there 

 was working with Roxy a short and stout man named 

 Oblutok with a full but straggling black beard. He had 

 with him his wife, whom I called Mrs. Oblutok, and their 

 daughter about fourteen years old. As passengers there 

 were Constable Walker of the Mounted Police, who was 

 in charge of the freight we carried, and two Indians who 

 were in effect his servants. Besides them there were two 

 miners and I. 



The miners were named Sullivan and Waugh. Sullivan 

 was a big, aggressive-looking, black bearded man; Waugh 

 was smaller and more retiring. They had turned up at 

 Macpherson a few days after I got there with a story that 

 they had left the gold country in the Yukon with pack 

 horses, had spent the whole spring and midsummer com- 

 ing slowly across the mountains looking for gold, had 

 eaten up all the provisions carried by the horses, had 



