XIV.] 
THE ESKIMO AT PORT CLARENCE. 
233 
lips below the corners of the mouth. In these holes were worn 
large pieces of bone, glass, or stone (figure 9, page 237). But 
these ornaments were often removed, and then the edges of the 
large holes closed so much that the face was not much dis¬ 
figured. Many had in addition a similar hole forward in the 
lip. It struck me, however, that this strange custom was about 
to disappear completely, or at least to be Europeanised by the 
exchange of holes in the ears for holes in the mouth. An 
almost full-grown young woman had a large blue glass bead 
hanging from the nose, in whose partition a hole had been 
made for its suspension, but she was very much embarrassed and 
hid her head in a fold of mama’sy>rsZ:, when this piece of grandeur 
attracted general attention. All the women had long strings of 
beads in the ears. They wore bracelets of iron or copper, resem¬ 
bling those of the Chukches. The colour of the skin was not very 
dark, with perceptible redness on the cheeks, the hair black 
and tallow-like, the eyes small, brown, slightly oblique, the 
face flat, the nose small and depressed at the root. Most of 
the natives were of average height, appeared to be healthy and 
in good condition, and were marked neither by striking thinness 
nor corpulence. The feet and the hands were small. 
A certain elegance and order prevailed in their small tents, 
the floor of which was covered with mats of plaited plants. In 
many places vessels formed of cocoa-nut shells were to be seen, 
brought thither, like some of the mats, by whalers from the 
South Sea Islands. For the most part their household and 
hunting implements, axes, knives, saws, breechloaders, revolvers, 
&c., were of American origin, but they still used or preserved in 
the lumber repositories of the tent, bows and arrows, bird-darts, 
bone boat-hooks, and various stone implements. The fishing 
implements especially were made with extraordinary skill of 
coloured sorts of bone or stone, glass • beads, red pieces of the 
feet of certain swimming birds, &c. The different materials 
were bound together by twine made of whalebone in such a 
