MURDOCH. } TOBACCO. 65 
it liquid. This great fondness for plenty of cold water has been often 
noticed among the Eskimo elsewhere, and appears to be quite charac- 
teristic of the race.!. They have acquired a taste for liquor, and like to 
get enough to produce intoxication. As well as we could judge, they 
are easily affected by alcohol. Some of them during our stay learned 
to be very fond of coffee, ‘ka/fe,” but tea they are hardly acquainted 
with, though they will drink it. I have noticed that they sometimes 
drank the water produced by the melting of the sea ice along the beach, 
and pronounced it excellent when it was so brackish that I found it quite 
undrinkable. 
NARCOTICS. 
The only narcotic in use among these people is tobacco, which they 
obtain directly or indirectly from the whites, and which has been in use 
among them from the earliest time when we have any knowledge of 
them. When Mr. Elson,in the Blossom’s barge, visited Point Barrow, in 
1826, he found tobacco in general use and the most marketable article.” 
This undoubtedly came from the Russians by way of Siberia and Ber- 
ing Strait, as Kotzebue found the natives of the sound which bears his 
name, who were in communication with the Asiatic coast by way of the 
Diomedes, already addicted to the use of tobacco in 1816. It is not 
probable that tobacco was introduced on the Arctic coast by way of the 
Russian settlements in Alaska. There were no Russian posts north of 
Bristol Bay until 1833, when St. Michael’s Redoubt was built. When 
Capt. Cook visited Bristol Bay, in 1778, he found that tobacco was 
not used there,’ while in Norton Sound, the same year, the natives “had 
no dislike to tobacco.”* Neither was it introduced from the English 
posts in the east, as Franklin found the “Kanmi/dlin” not in the habit 
of using it—‘‘The western Esquimaux use tobacco, and some of our 
visitors had smoked it, but thought the flavor very disagreeable,” °—nor 
had they adopted the habit in 1857.° 
When the Plover wintered at Point Barrow, according to Dr. Simpson’s 
account,’ all the tobacco, except a little obtained from the English dis- 
covery ships, came from Asia and was brought by the Nunatanmiun. 
At present the latter bring very little if any tobacco, and the supply is 
obtained directly from the ships, though a little occasionally finds its 
way up the coast from the southwest. 
1See, for instance, Egede: ‘‘Their Drink is nothing but Water” (Greenland, p. 134), and, ‘‘ Fur- 
thermore, they put great Lumps of Ice and Snow into the Water they drink, to make it cooler for to 
quench their Thirst”’ ( p. 135). ‘‘Their drink is clear water, which stands in the house in a great copper 
vessel, or in a wooden tub. * * * They bring in asupply of fresh water every day * * * and 
that their water may be cool they choose to lay a piece of ice or a little snow init’ * * * (Crantz, 
vol. 1, p. 144). Compare, also, Parry, 2d voy., p. 506, where the natives of Iglulik are said to drink a 
great deal of water, which they get by melting snow, and like very cold. The same fondness for water 
was observed by Nordenski6ld in Siberia (Vega, vol. 2, p. 114) 
2 Beechey, Voyage, p. 308. 
3 Third Voyage, vol. 2, p. 437. 
4Thbid, 2, p. 479. 
5 Second Exp., p. 130. 
® See T. Simpson, Narrative, p. 156. 
7 Op. cit., pp., 235, 236, 266. 
9 ETH——) 
