MURDOCH. } FOOD. 63 
glad to purchase from us corn-meal **mush” and the broken victuals from 
the table. These were, however, considered as special dainties and 
eaten as luncheons or as a dessert after the regular meal. The children 
and even some of the women were always on the watch for the cook’s 
slop bucket to be brought out, and vied with the ubiquitous dogs in 
searching for scraps of food. Meat which epicures would call rather 
“high” is eaten with relish, but they seem to prefer fresh meat when 
they can get it. 
Means of preparing food.—F ood is generally cooked, except, perhaps, 
whale-skin and whale-gum, which usually seem to be eaten as soon as 
obtained, without waiting for a fire. Meat of all kinds is generally 
boiled in abundance of water over a fire of driftwood, and the broth 
thus made is drunk hot before eating the meat. Fowls are prepared for 
boiling by skinning them. Fish are also boiled, but are often eaten raw, 
especially in winter at the deer-hunting camps, when they are frozen 
hard. Meat is sometimes eaten raw or frozen. Lieut. Ray found one 
family in camp on Kulugrua who had no fire of any kind, and were 
eating everything raw. They had run out of oil some time before and 
did not like to spend time in going to the coast for more while deer were 
plentiful. 
When traveling in winter, according to Lieut. Ray, they prefer frozen 
fish or a sort of pemmican made as follows: The marrow is extracted 
from reindeer bones by boiling, and to a quantity of this is added 2 or 3 
pounds of crushed seal or whale blubber, and the whole beaten up with 
the hands in a large wooden bow] to the consistency of frozen cream. 
Into this they stir bits of boiled venison, generally the poorer portions 
of the meat scraped off the bone, and chewed up small by all the women 
and children of the family, ““each using some cabalistic word as they 
east in their mouthful.”' The mass is made up into 2-pound balls and 
carried in little sealskin bags. Flour, when obtained, is made into a 
sort of porridge, of which they are very fond. Cooking is mostly done 
outside of the dwelling, in the open airin summer, or in kitchens opening 
out of the passageway in winter. Little messes only, like an occasional 
dish of soup or porridge, are cooked over the lamps in the house. This 
habit, of course, comes from the abundant supply of firewood, while the 
Eskimo most frequently described live in a country where wood is very 
searce, and are obliged to depend on oil for fuel. 
Time and frequency of eating—When these people are living in the 
winter houses they do not, as far as we could learn, have any regular 
time for meals, but eat whenever they are hungry and have leisure. The 
women seem to keep a supply of cooked food on hand ready for any 
one to eat. When the men are working in the ka‘dyigi,or “ club house,” 
or when a number of them are encamped together in tents, as at the 
whaling camp in 1885, or the regular summer camp at Pe/rnyt, the 
women at intervals through the day prepare dishes of meat, which the 
‘Lieut. Ray’s MS. notes. 
