INNUIT MODE OF EATING FOOD. 



213 



These seal suppers I found to be most excellent. The seal- 

 meat is cooked in a pan suspended for three or four hours over 

 the fire-lamp. Generally it is boiled in water — half of it sea- 

 water — and blood! When ready, it is served up by first giving 

 to each person a piece of the meat. This is followed by a dish of 

 smoking-hot soup, that is, the material in which the seal has been 

 cooked ; and I challenge any one to find more palatable food in 

 the United States. It is ambrosia and nectar / Once tasted, the 

 cry is sure to be "More! more! 1 ' 1 



The seal-meat, I may state, is eaten by holding it in both hands, 

 the fingers and the dental " mill" supplying the offices of both 

 knife and fork. This mode of eating was known before such in- 

 struments were thought of. Among the Innuits generally, the 

 following practice prevails : Before the igloo wife hands any one 

 a piece of meat, she " soups" it all over, that is, sucks out all the 

 fluid from the meat that would probably otherwise drip out. 

 Farthermore, if there be any foreign matter upon it, such as seal, 

 dog, or reindeer hairs, she licks them all off with her pliant tongue. 



On January 29th we had the cold so severe that the thermom- 

 eter showed, during the night and in the morning, 82° below the 

 freezing point ! yet, strangely, I had experienced more severe sen- 

 sations of cold when the temperature was at zero than at this low 

 state. Still it was cold, and bitingly cold ! How Ebierbing and 

 the other men — who had again left on the previous evening — 

 could keep to their watch during that cold night was to me mar- 

 velous; yet they did so; and when Ebierbing returned about 

 9 A.M. without success, he told me that he was unwearied in his 

 watchfulness all through the dreary time. At midnight a seal had 

 come to breathe, but he was not so ready or so smart — probably 

 was too much frozen — as to strike in time, and therefore lost it. 



Sometimes the wives accompany their husbands sealing, even 

 in such weather. 



Eecording my own experience of igloo life at this time, I may 

 here say that, having then spent twenty nights in a snow house, I 

 enjoyed it exceedingly. Now, as I look back at the past, I find 

 no reason to utter any thing different. I was as happy as cir- 

 cumstances permitted, even though with Innuits only for my 

 companions. Life has charms every where, and I must confess 

 that Innuit life possesses those charms to a great degree for me. 



On the 31st we had a stranger visit us — a boy called Noo-ok- 

 kong — who arrived from a spot one mile west of where our first 



