THE LIFE AT TUKTUYAKTOK 145 



sisted that we must not speak anything but Eskimo. Of 

 this I knew almost none. He had the greatest patience in 

 first saying a thing to me in plain Eskimo and then ex- 

 plaining it in the jargon (of which I had secured complete 

 command at Herschel Island and Shingle Point). How- 

 ever, I now know that I misunderstood many things when 

 he first explained them, and doubtless there were many 

 things which I did not understand at all. 



Adequately dressed and seated on blocks of snow in 

 the shelter of our wind-breaks, we talked as comfortably 

 as if the weather had been warm, though the mercury 

 in my thermometer frequently fell to 40 ° below zero. 

 That was no colder than what I was used to in Dakota 

 and, as my clothes were now much more satisfactory 

 than they had been in Dakota, I was more comfortable 

 than any one could conceive who has tried to protect 

 himself against winter cold merely by putting on a heavy 

 fur overcoat over a business suit. 



We used to fish till about four in the afternoon. The 

 people who were at home would have about noon a lunch 

 of frozen fish similar to our breakfast. This we fisher- 

 men missed. About an hour before the rest of us were 

 ready to quit work, Ovayuak's wife, who usually fished 

 with us, would precede us home to start the cooking. 

 Nearly every one of my Eskimo friends had a watch, 

 but our return in the afternoon depended not on the time 

 as shown by their watches, but on the daylight, and that 

 depended on the cloudiness. Also Ovayuak liked to stay 

 at his work as long as he felt like it. When we got home 

 we usually found that the meal was not quite ready, but 

 by the time we had taken off our outer garments and 

 removed the hoar frost from them, we would have before 



