CHAPTER XIII 



LEARNING TO BUILD A SNOWHOUSE AND TO BE 

 COMFORTABLE IN ONE 



I had expected to stay at Tuktuyaktok until March or 

 April but now I began to think that it might be impor- 

 tant to get into touch with my expedition which, accord- 

 ing to Captain Leavitt's guess, should be wintering some- 

 where along the Alaska coast two or three hundred miles 

 west of Herschel Island. Accordingly, when the time 

 came for Ovayuak and his wife to make their trip to 

 Herschel Island to see their new granddaughter, I asked 

 to be allowed to go with them. At first Ovayuak refused, 

 saying that the time immediately after the sun returns 

 is the coldest of the year and that a white man cannot 

 stand traveling in such weather. I pointed out that he 

 intended to take with him his youngest child, a boy of 

 three or four. But he replied that if I were also a small 

 child he would not mind taking the two of us, for you 

 can bundle a baby up in furs and strap him into a sled, 

 but I was too big for that. I asked where he got the 

 idea that a white man could not stand cold, and he said 

 he had heard about it indirectly from the whalers. His 

 own observation had been that those white men he had 

 actually traveled with were rather good travelers but 

 he supposed they must be exceptional, for his cousin 

 Roxy and others who had worked with the whalers had 

 been told by the white men themselves how greatly the 

 Eskimos excel in their ability to stand cold. 



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