64 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
men eat by themselves. When in the deer-hunting camps, according 
to Lieut. Ray, they eat but little in the morning, and can really be said 
to take no more than one full meal a day, which is eaten at night when 
the day’s work 1s done.' When on the march they usually take a few 
mouthfuls of the pemmican above described before they start out in 
the morning, and rarely touch food again till they go into camp at 
night. 
When a family returns from the spring deer hunt with plenty of ven- 
ison they usually keep open house for a day or two. The women of the 
household, with sometimes the assistance of a neighbor or two, keep 
the pot continually boiling, sending in dishes of meat at intervals, 
while the house is full of guests who stay for a short time, eating, 
smoking, and chatting, and then retire to make room for others. Messes 
are sometimes sent out to invalids who can not come to the feast. One 
household in the spring of 1883 consumed in this way two whole rein- 
deer in 24 hours. They use only their hands and a knife in eating meat, 
usually filling the mouth and cutting or biting off the mouthful. They 
are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time 
when they have plenty, but we never saw them gorge themselves in the 
manner described by Dr. Kane (2d Grinnell Exp., passim) and other 
writers. 
Their habits of hospitality prevent their laying up any large supply 
of meat, though blubber is carefully saved for commercial use, and they 
depend for subsistence, almost from day to day, on their success in 
hunting. When encamped, however, in small parties in the summer they 
often take more seals than they can consume. The carcasses of these, 
stripped of their skins and blubber, are buried in the gravel close to the 
camp, and dug up and brought home when meat becomes scarce in the 
winter. 
DRINKS. 
The habitual drink is water, which these people consume in great 
quantities when they can obtain it, and like to have very cold. In the 
winter there is always a lump of clean snow on a rack close to the lamp, 
with a tub under it to catch the water that drips from it. This is re- 
placed in the summer by a bucket of fresh water from some pond or 
lake. When the men are sitting in their open air clubs at the summer 
samps there is always a bucket of fresh water in the middle of the cir- 
ele, with a dipper to drink from. Hardly a native ever passed the sta- 
tion without stopping for a drink of water, often drinking a quart of 
cold water at a time. When tramping about in the winter they eat 
large quantities of ice and snow, and on the march the women carry 
small canteens of sealskin, which they fill with snow and carry inside 
of their jackets, where the heat of the body melts the snow and keeps 
'“They have no set Time for Meals, but every one eats when he is hungry, except when they go to 
sea, and then their chief Repast is a supper after they are come home in the Evening.”’ (Egede, Green- 
land, p. 135. Compare also, Crantz, vol. 1, p. 145.) 
