144 ACROSS THE SUB-ARCTICS OF CANADA. 
the square flipper seal, is nearly thirty feet in length. 
An Eskimo can handle his whip with great dexterity, 
being able not only to reach any particular dog in the 
pack, but to strike any part of its body, and with as 
much force as the occasion may require. 
Another curious Eskimo practice, observed by the 
women, is that of daily chewing the boots of the house- 
hold. As already intimated, these boots or moceasins 
are made of oil-tanned seal or deer-skins. The hair is 
always removed from the skin of which the foot of the 
moccasin is made, but not always from that part forming 
the leg. However, the point is this, that these moccasins, 
after having been wet and dried again, become very 
hard, and the most convenient or etfective—or possibly 
the most avreeable—way of softening them seems to 
be by mastication. Whatever may be the reason for 
adopting this method, the fact is that nearly every 
morning the native women soften the shoes of the 
family most beautifully by chewing them. What to us 
would seem the disagreeable part of this operation 
cannot be thoroughly understood by one who has not 
some idea of the flavor of a genuine old Eskimo shoe. 
In one of my trips in the land of the Eskimo I had an 
escort composed not only of men and women, old and 
young, but also of little children, several of whom could 
not have been more than five or six years old, and it was 
marvellous to see the powers of endurance of these little 
creatures, for they travelled along with the rest of the 
party, a distance of twenty-five miles, having no other 
object in view than that of seeing the white stranger. 
The “shin-ig-bee,” or Eskimo sleeping bag, is an 
article essential to the comfort of the traveller when 
