MOONSHINE AND HYGIENE 165 



If contact with civilization had taught the Es- 

 kimo the art of distillation and drunkenness, it 

 also had improved living conditions among 

 them. Many owned rifles. Their spears and 

 harpoons were steel tipped. They bartered for 

 flour, molasses, sugar, and all kinds of canned 

 goods with the whale ships every summer. 

 They had learned to cook. There was a stove 

 in the village. The intellectual Eskimo boasted 

 of the stove as showing the high degree of civili- 

 zation achieved by his people. The stove, be it 

 added, was used chiefly for heating purposes 

 in winter and remained idle in summer. The 

 natives regarded the cooked foods of the white 

 man as luxuries to be indulged in only occasion- 

 ally in a spirit of connoisseurship. They still 

 preferred their immemorial diet of blubber and 

 raw meat. 



Aside from these faint touches of civilization, 

 the Eskimos were as primitive in their life and 

 mental processes as people who suddenly had 

 stepped into the present out of the world of 

 ten thousand years ago. I fancy Adam and 

 Eve would have lived after the manner of the 



