506 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



which account they will bring it from a distance of fifty yards from the 

 huts. They have an extreme dislike to drinking water much above the 

 temperature of 32°. In eating their meals the mistress of the family, having 

 previously cooked the meat, takes a large lump out of the pot with her 

 fingers and hands it to her husband, who placing a part of it between his 

 teeth cuts it off with a large knife in that position, and then passes the 

 knife and meat together to his next neighbour. In cutting off a mouthful 

 of meat the knife passes so close to their lips, that nothing but constant 

 habit could ensure them from the danger of the most terrible gashes ; and it 

 would make an English mother shudder to see the manner in which 

 children, five or six years old, are at all times freely trusted with a knife to 

 be used in this way. 



The length of one of the best of seven canoes belonging to these Esqui- 

 maux was twenty-five feet, including a narrow-pointed projection, three 

 feet long at each end, which turns a little upward from the horizontal. The 

 extreme breadth, which is just before the circular hole, was twenty-one 

 inches and the depth ten inches and a half. The plane of the upper sur- 

 face of the canoe, except in the two extreme projections, bends downwards 

 a little from the centre towards the head and stern, giving it the appearance 

 of what in ships is called " broken-backed." The gunwales are of fir, in 

 some instances of one piece, three or four inches broad in the centre and 

 tapering gradually away towards the ends. The timbers, as well as the 

 fore-and-aft connecting pieces, are of the same material, the former being 

 an inch square, and sometimes so close together as to require between forty 

 and fifty of them in one canoe ; which when thus " in frame" is one of the 

 prettiest things of the kind that can be imagined. The skin with which 

 the canoe is covered is exclusively that of the ncitiek, prepared by scraping 

 off the hair and fat with an ooloo, and stretching it tight on a frame over the 

 fire ; after which and a good deal of chewing, it is sewn on by the women 

 with admirable neatness and strength. Their paddles have a blade at each 

 end, the whole length being nine feet and a half ; the blades are covered 

 with a narrow plate of bone round the ends to secure them from splitting : 

 they are always made of fir, and generally of several pieces scarfed and 

 woolded together. 



In summer they rest their canoes upon two small stones raised four 

 feet from the ground ; and in winter, on a similar structure of snow ; in 

 one case to allow them to dry freely, and in the other to prevent the 



