FOREST AND STREAM, 
[June 2, igoo 
Eskimo. 
Plover Bay and Port Clarence. 
Three or four interesting hours were spent on St. Paul 
Island, and then, taking to the life boats again, we re- 
turned to the ship. It took but a few moments to hoist 
the boats on board, to raise the anchor, and turning the 
ship's prow toward the dense fog bank that hung about 
the island, we sailed off into the mist. 
The next day found us heading north for St. Matthew's 
Island. The sky was gray and the weather raw and cold. 
There ^yas a good breeze, and the sea bad rather more 
tumble to it than we had yet seen. Land was not visible, 
yet all about us were many sea birds, murres, petrels, ful- 
mars, dark and light, and also, harlequin ducks, associated 
and fl3'ing with the murres. There was no fog, and we 
could see a long way. It was thought that we should reach 
St. Matthew's Island in the early evening, about dinner 
time, but before noon a heavy fog set in, and frequent 
soundings were taken to determine where we were with 
reference to the island. Not much could be learned from 
them, and a.s nothing was to be seen in the fog, we at length 
gave up trying to find it, and turned nearly west, so as to 
give the island a wide berth, heading for Plover Bay, 
sun came out, so that observation could be made, and soon 
afterward land appeared before us, and as the ship ap- 
proached it the sea went down. About 5 o'clock we were 
close to it, and could see that high bluffs or mountains, al- 
most vertical, two or three thousand feet high, rose 
directly from the shore. They were streaked with snow 
banks and showed no green thing upon them. 
Before long the ship entered Plover Bay, and soon, with 
the glasses, an Eskimo village was discovered on its 
north side. It stood on a sand spit and consisted of a 
dozen houses, of which half proved to be winter and half 
summer houses. People and dogs could be seen moving 
about; a wooden whale boat lay near the village, and two 
or three skin baidarras or umiaks were on the beach. In 
the water through which we were passing were many 
eider and king eider ducks, and now and then a hair seal 
showed its head near the ship. 
Rounding in behind the sand .spit, the ship 'came to 
anchor, and before long the whole party were on shore and 
inspecting the village. The small huts were circular in 
form. The walls were vertical, and of skin or canvas, 
higher than a man's head, and then a skin-covered roof 
sloped up to a blunt point. There was no actual smoke 
hole, though the smoke can leak out at the top, and where 
the skins come together over the door running up to the 
roof. The fireplace stood to the left of the door as one en- 
tered, and about it was a circle of large stones. Casks and 
kegs holding meat and oil stood on either side of the 
door near the walls, while trunks, boxes and other prop- 
erty were close to the walls, further from the door. On 
These lines of sealskin are used in making nets for captur- 
ing the seals. The hide is stretched and dried, is then 
soaked again, the hair is removed by the application of 
lye, and it is again stretched and dried. It is then liberally 
oiled and trimmed about the edges, and with a sharp 
knife the Eskimo starts to cut the line in a spiral from 
the outer edge, round and round, until he reaches the 
center. The line so cut is uniform in width — about one- 
sixteenth of an inch — and nearly transparent. It is then 
worked a little and stretched between posts to dry. It is 
strong and durable, the best possible for their use. The 
nets are set under the ice, about the seal hole, and the 
seal coming up to breathe becomes entangled and drowns. 
Under frames made of the curved ribs of whales, and 
shaped somewhat like a sweathouse, were fireplaces, in 
one or two of which fires were burning, and over which . 
pots were cooking. 
The surroundings showed that this village had been 
occupied for a very long time. The moldering bones of 
many whales lay about it. Eight skulls were counted in 
varying stages of decay. There were old pits surrounded 
by whale skulls and other bones, in which blubber is 
stored until it can be tried out. These were practically 
refrigerators, though it is perhaps doubtful how far 
refrigerators are needed here, where in the shade it is al- 
ways cool. The circles of the now disused winter houses 
are in summer used as store houses, in which casks of oil, 
sledges, drying frames, etc., are placed. The doors are 
closed — as are also those of the temporarily unoccupied 
summer houses — by the shoulder-blade of a whale set on 
Photo bv E. S. Curtis. 
ESKIMO SUMMER HOUSE. 
Copyright, 1899, by E. H. Harriman. 
Siberia. Here there was said to be a village of Eskimo, 
and mountain sheep are reported to inhabit the high lands 
near the coast. These, of course, are different from the 
mountain sheep of America, and are known as Ovis 
nivicola, a name which is certainly appropriate to any 
dwellers in the high lands in these latitudes, for here we 
were between the 64th and 65th parallel, and so but little 
south of the Arctic Circle. 
From Captain Humphrey, the manager in Alaska of 
the Pacific Steam Whaling Company, we had, on these two 
evenings, interesting talks concerning the whale fisheries 
of the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. It will be news 
to many readers, as it was to most of us, that each whaler, 
in addition to its crew, provides itself, when it reaches 
Alaska, with a crew of Eskimo and their dogs, which 
accompany the vessel throughout its entire cruise. The 
principal use of these people is as scouts and hunters. 
When the whalers reach Herschell Island, west of the 
mouth of the Mackenzie River, where they have a sta- 
tion with permanent buildings, they send parties of Eskimo 
into the interior to kill deer, and at the close of the 
hunting season they often have no less than 500 caribou 
carcasses packed away in their ice houses on Herschell 
Island. Then, too, when the ships are surrounded by 
ice that they cannot break through, the Eskimo ai-e often 
sent out in all directions to look for open water. With 
their dog teams they can travel great distances in a 
short time, and can make speedy report to the ship of any- 
thing of interest that they may discover. 
To Plover Bay, 
Under a gray sky, but with the air clear and with a 
hard northwest wind which raised quite a sea. the ship 
steamed away in the wind's eye. The air was cool, the 
thermometer standing at 40 degrees, but fresh and bracing. 
Owing to the head wind and the sea, orogress was slow — 
pnly about ppyen knots m bour, Befop'e mid-day the 
poles running from point to point overhead hung tools, im- 
plements, lines, drying meat, etc. At the back of the hut, 
protected from the rain which may sometimes leak through 
the roof by a large walrus skin .stretched tight close to 
the roof, are set in the ground four poles, supporting a 
frame of four other poles, from which hangs an inner house 
or sleeping apartment, rectangular, of deerskin dressed 
with the hair on, the hair side out. This is nearly high 
enough for a man to stand in, and is twice as wide as high 
or deep — say 10 or 12 feet one way, by 5 or 6 wide and 
high. It is higher at the front than at the back; in 
other words, there is a little pitch backward to its roof. 
The front of this rectangular tent lifts up, and the family 
when retiring to rest go in, lower the front curtain, and 
sleep. Sometimes a partition divides the apartment, but 
usually there is none. 
The winter houses have the same shape as those used in 
summer, but are far more substantial. The uprights, 
which are set in a circle about i foot apart, are straight 
whale ribs planted in the ground and projecting 6 or 8 feet 
above it. Between the uprights sods are piled in, one 
upon another, reaching up to the top. From the top of 
the wall so formed, the" poles which support the roof— not 
greatly inclined — run together at the top._ These poles are 
covered with dried walrus and sea lion hides. The houses 
are warm and comfortable, but, of course, close and 
smokJ^ When warm weather comes, the villagers move 
into the summer houses, pull the roofs off the winter 
ones, and sometimes even pull dowm the sods, so that the 
site of the winter house may dry off. 
On noles and frames set in the ground about the camp 
were hanging reindeer skins, frames with the hides of 
seals, walruses and sea lions drying on them, seal meat, 
inflated seal bladders, the inflated complete skins of 
=eals turned inside out through the mouth and drying — 
for walrus floats — harpoons and spears, bundles of seal 
nets, made from sealskin, while b-^tween posts were 
stretched long lengths of sealskin fincj walrus s|^in lines. 
0 
edge. Such a shoulder-blade is also often used as a 
table. 
We saw here the fresh skulls of two sheep (Ovis nivi- 
cola). From the talk of the Eskimo it would appear that 
they are not uncopimon. 
This village consisted of twenty-five or thirty people. 
There seemed to be eight or ten men, as many women, and 
some children. All the men had scanty beards and 
moustaches, and all had the crown of the head shaved, the 
hair being cut short in a tonsure all about. The men 
are large and stout as to their bodies, but not of great 
stature. The women are very short. One by whom I 
stood came about up to my chest. On the whole, the 
people seemed well formed and strong. All were dressed 
in reindeer skin clothing; the men in parkas or shirts, 
ixsually with collars of bear fur. The men's parkas were 
short; the women's long. The men wear tightly fitting 
knee breeches and leggings; the women very large baggy 
knickerbockers. Both sexes wear sealskin mukluks, which 
reach to the knees. Children of either sex dress like 
the adults. 
The dead of the village are removed from the house 
soon after dissolution and carried to a gravelly bench" at 
the foot of the hill, where — dressed in their ordinary 
clothing — they are laid on the ground and left there. The 
dogs of the village soon eat them up, all except the 
skulls, which roll about until, destroyed, by the weather. 
Here we saw an old man with ivory labrets in his cheeks. 
There were one or two women with the ends of their 
noses cut off. These Eskimo say that they have lived " 
here for a long time, but that their fathers came from the 
American side a great many years ago. 
Late in the evening the ship steamed away from 
Plover Bay to Indian Point, where there is another 
Eskimo village, but the surf was so heavy that no one 
anded. The evening was brilliant, and the sun set behind 
the mountains at 10 :,-^o, and rose again at i -.45. It was 
possible to read ordinary type all t^irou^h the TT'gbt, and 
