VEEY HARD WEATHER 407 



tories. Indoors the thermometer ranged from 29° to 40° below the freezing 

 point, *' which," says Rae, " would not have been unpleasant where there 

 was a fire to warm the hands and feet, or even room to move about ; but 

 where there was neither the one nor the other, some few degrees more heat 

 would have been preferable. As we could not go for water we were forced 

 to thaw snow, and take only one meal each day. My waistcoat, after a 

 week's wearing, became so stiff from the condensation and freezing of my 

 breath upon it, that I had much trouble to get it buttoned." Stormy and 

 intensely cold weather prevailed throughout the month. Ouligbuck, the 

 Eskimo interpreter, went out to hunt on the 18th, and for a week nothing 

 was seen of him. He had been caught in a snow-storm on the day he set 

 out, and was unable to proceed. In this predicament he was obliged to 

 build a snow hut, in which, with the storm howling around and over him, he 

 passed the night comfortably, Kext day he went on to the Eskimos at 

 Christie Lake, abused them for not bringing a large quantity of oil, accord- 

 ing to promise, to Fort Hope, and having stayed with them for a week, and 

 energetically exhorted them to redeem their promises for the future, he 

 returned on the 25th to Repulse Bay, much to the astonishment of Dr Rae, 

 who had given him up for lost. 



The Eskimos of Repulse Bay are a people of extraordinary endurance. 

 Even in such wintry weather as has just been described, it is the custom of 

 these Eskimos to strip off all their clothes before going to bed. It is necessary 

 to explain, however, that the ever-burning lamp by which they cook their 

 food, and which serves the double purpose of diffusing light and heat, pre- 

 serves the temperature of their houses at a comparatively high register. Rae 

 visited a family on the 1st February, and found their " comfortable house " so 

 warm, that his waistcoat, which had been frozen quite stiff for some time 

 previously, " actually thawed." Two days afterwards the Doctor came upon 

 ona of these Eskimos repairing the runners of his sledge. " The substance 

 used was a mixture of moss chopped up fine, and snow soaked in water, 

 lumps of which are firmly pressed on the sledge with the bare hand, and 

 smoothed over so as to have an even surface. The process occupied the 

 man nearly an tour, during the whole of which time he did not put his hands 

 in his mits, nor did he appear to feel the cold much, although the tempera- 

 ture was 30° below zero." The ingenuity also of the Eskimos, as displayed 

 especially in trapping wild animals, is remarkable. One method of destroying 

 the wolf deserves notice. The usual method is to secure a loaded gun by 

 means of sticks, so that its muzzle shall point straight at a bait which is laid 

 down at the distance of fifteen or twenty yards. A line connected with the 

 trigger of the gun is tied to the bait. When the wolf seizes the bait, the line 

 is agitated, th^ gun is fired, and the wolf is usually so severely wounded as 

 to be easily tracked and killed. Ouligbuck, Rae's Eskimo interpreter, 



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