298 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT [BTH. ANN. 18 
bath. The men and boys brought in their urine tubs, and wore loon- 
skin caps on their heads. Each one had a respirator made of fine wood 
shavings woven into a pad to hold in the teeth to cover the lips and 
nostrils, without which it would not have been possibie for them to 
breathe in the stifling heat. When the wood had burned down to a 
bed of coals the cover was replaced over the smoke hole in the roof, 
_and when the men had perspired enough they bathed and then went 
out to take a cold-water douche. 
In the winter of 1880 I traveled around the northern coast of Norton 
sound and found many of the villages on the verge of famine. This 
was due mainly to the fact that they had eaten most of their supplies 
early in the season, trusting to the weather being such that they could 
take sufficient fish for their needs later on. As the winter turned out 
to be excessively severe, nearly all of the dogs along this coast were 
starved and the people were on very short allowance for a long time. 
Just north of Unalaklit I camped in a small hut 10 by 12 feet in area 
and 54 feet high in the middle. Three families were living in this 
house, and including my party numbered sixteen adults who occupied 
the room that night. The air was so foul that when a candle was 
lighted it went out, and a match would flare up and immediately become 
extinguished as.though dipped in water. After making a hole in one 
corner of the cover of the smoke hole the air became sufficiently pure 
for us to pass the night without ill effect. 
At the village of Unaktolik, just beyond the last place mentioned, I 
found a room 15 by 20 feet in area and 6 feet high, where we numbered 
twenty-five people during the night of our stay. 
Wherever we found the people with a small food supply they were 
usually quiet and depressed; but at a village on the northern shore of 
Norton sound, where food was plentiful, everyone appeared to be in 
the greatest good humor. 
During the summer food is more abundant than in winter, and the 
people are more cheerful at that season and inclined to give a heartier 
welcome to astranger. The winter season being one of possible famine, 
there is geverally a slight feeling of uncertainty regarding the future. 
When we landed from the Corwin at a summer trading village on 
the shore of Hotham inlet, in Kotzebue sound, we were surrounded at 
once by two or three hundred people, all shouting and smiling good 
naturedly. They crowded about us with the greatest curiosity, and 
several at once volunteered to carry my camera and box of trading 
goods to one of the lodges. We walked along in the midst of a rabble 
of fur-clad figures and a great variety of strong odors which they 
exhaled. The dirty brown faces, ornamented with the huge stone 
labrets of the men and the tattooed chin lines of the women, were alive 
with animation; their mouths were wide open and their eyes glistened 
with curiosity and excitement. Before us moved a crowd of fat chil- 
dren, who tried to run ahead and look back at the same time, so that 
