LEARNING TO LIVE AS AN ESKIMO 73 



any more remarkable that some people should like high 

 fish than that some people should like "strong" cheeses 

 or high venison and pheasants. Neither is it any more 

 remarkable that the Eskimos eat raw fish than that the 

 Japanese and Norwegians do so. Furthermore, there is 

 no essential difference between eating raw fish and raw 

 oysters. After all, what is the difference between eating 

 a thing raw and eating a thing "rare?" When you order 

 a big steak "underdone" you get a little meat on the 

 outside that is cooked and a lot of meat on the inside 

 that is raw. If you try on your friends the experiment 

 of just calling raw meat rare, you will see that it helps 

 a lot in making it easier to swallow. 



At least it helped with me. By the time I had gone 

 through all the above reasoning (which it did not occur 

 to me to do for several weeks) I one day tried the 

 frozen fish and found it not so bad. Each time I tried 

 it I liked it a little better, and eventually I got so fond 

 of it that I agreed with the Eskimos in preferring it to 

 cooked fish "for a change." 



I had not yet been thoroughly broken in to the fish 

 diet nor had I become completely used to many other 

 strange features of my life with the Eskimos, when one 

 day a schooner was seen coming along from the west. 

 At first I thought it was the Duchess of Bedford but the 

 Eskimos presently recognized her as the Penelope. She 

 dropped anchor half a mile outside of our camp and a 

 boat came ashore, bringing Sten and two of the part- 

 owners of the Penelope, his brother-in-law Kunak and 

 the junior partner Tulugak. Sten said they were on 

 their way at last toward Cape Parry to make their for- 

 tunes plundering the wreck of the Alexander. 



The visitors received a jolly welcome from us, as all 



