134 HUNTERS OF THE GREAT NORTH 



The lamps never were extinguish °d, for we needed them 

 for heat. Usually there were three or four of them 

 burning, each in a corner of the house. They were huge, 

 half-moon shaped bowls that had been adzed out of blocks 

 of soapstone. The wick was a ridge of powder lying 

 along the straight edge of the lamp. This powder was 

 sometimes hard wood sawdust, sometimes powder made 

 by scraping or sawing walrus ivory and sometimes it was 

 dried moss that had been rubbed into powder between the 

 hands. Occasionally if other materials gave out, they 

 would take small pieces of manila rope that had been 

 secured from the whalers, and hack the fibers into lengths 

 of one-twentieth of an inch or less, thus practically con- 

 verting the fibers into powder. Sometimes we tried to 

 use ordinary commercial lamp wicks but they were much 

 more difficult to keep burning properly, for the Eskimo 

 women are very particular that the lamp shall never 

 smoke the least bit. No duty of a housekeeper is more 

 important than to keep the lamp well trimmed. 



For ideal burning the bowl of the lamp must always be 

 almost full of oil but never quite full. This is regulated 

 in a simple automatic way. A slab of polar bear or seal 

 fat is hung almost over the flame. If the oil in the lamp 

 gets a little too low, there is more of the lamp wick ex- 

 posed and the flame becomes bigger. The increased heat 

 of the flame tries out the fat hanging over the lamp and 

 makes the oil trickle down more rapidly. This gradually 

 raises the level of the oil in the bowl until it floods part 

 of the wick and decreases in that way the size of the 

 flame. This cools off the vicinity of the lamp enough 

 so that the slab of blubber stops dripping. Then the 

 flame gradually increases in size as the oil lowers in the 

 lamp until a second flaring up again brings streams of 



