Summer Life 



135 



July 14: The day was spent in fishing. The children caught a longspur with 

 a noose of sinew. Mikinrok in the evening boiled some old deer-meat; it 

 was full of maggots, but the Eskimos ate it with great content. 



July 15: We moved again to a bay at the north end of Lake Angmaloktok. 



July 16 — 19: Mosquitoes bothered us a great deal; the Eskimos flapped them 

 from their faces with loon skins. We secured a fair number of fish at this 

 place. Early in the morning of the 18th Higilak went to examine a fox-trap 

 she had set for sea-gulls, and saw several fish swimming in a large pool 

 where a stream from the hillside entered one corner of the lake. She returned 



Fig. 43. Avranna repairing his bow, ColviUe hills 



and told Ikpakhuak and Tutsik, who seized their spears and waded in after 

 them, securing six. The following day, with Avranna, who had arrived 

 with his family in the meantime, they repeated the process in another lake 

 and speared 15. The water could not have been above 32° F., for all but 

 this corner of the lake was still ice-bound, yet they waded about in it for 

 fully half an hour, often immersed as high as their hips. It was impossible 

 not to admire their endurance, for their sldns were blue with the cold. 

 During the last three or four weeks only the heads of the fish were ever 

 cooked (except for me), the bodies being dried and stored away for the 

 winter. Higilak divined on the 16th. 

 July 20: We moved to Kauwaktok again. 



