124 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



left some gear at his camp and this he would be able to 

 fetch back with him on his return after delivering me to 

 Harrison's. Some of his best friends also lived on the 

 Eskimo Lakes and he would be glad to visit them and 

 introduce me to them. 



The territory we traveled through going south from the 

 seacoast towards the Eskimo Lakes reminded me of the 

 North Dakota prairies where we used to have our cattle 

 ranch. There was snow on the ground, of course, but 

 rather less than there would have been in North Dakota 

 at the corresponding time of year, and the grass was 

 sticking up here and there through the snow. It was 

 evident that if the winter resemblance between an arctic 

 and a Dakota prairie was close, the summer resemblance 

 would be equally great, and this I have since found to be 

 the case. 



Our first day was a short one, only about ten or twelve 

 miles, and we came to the trapping camp of a single 

 family that lived in a creek bed well stocked with willows. 

 Although few of these were more than six or eight feet 

 high, they gave an adequate fuel supply. As for shelter 

 from winter blizzards, that is something the Eskimos 

 cannot imagine to be necessary. If they need a shelter 

 for the house they can always build a semi-circular wind- 

 break wall of snow blocks in an hour or two that gives 

 not only protection but also directs the snow so that the 

 blizzard piles it into drifts at some distance from the 

 house where it will be in nobody's way. 



The next day wc reached the first camp in the Eskimo 

 Lakes country where we found Sten's brother-in-law 

 Kunak with his family occupying half of a big house, 

 and another Alaska family occupying the other half. 

 Their house was not the regular beehive type used by the 



