100 THE LAST VOYAGE OF THE KARLUK 
these footbags, which had fur inside and Burberry 
cloth outside. I had with me a coonskin coat 
which I had bought a few years before in Boston. 
I now cut this up and divided it among the men, 
as far as it would go, to be made into these foot- 
bags. In addition I told each man that he must 
have at least four pair of deerskin or sheepskin 
stockings and three pair of deerskin boots. We 
used scissors and knives to cut the skins into suit¬ 
able pieces for making boots and clothing. The 
Eskimos used a crescent-shaped implement called 
the hudloWj not unlike a mince-meat chopper; 
they could use it very deftly and cut out clothing 
exceedingly well with it. The skins had to be 
softened, as I have mentioned before, by breaking 
the vellum; this was done by scraping it with a 
piece of iron like a chisel. Some Eskimo women 
soften the vellum by chewing it. 
We conducted our lives according to a regular 
routine similar to that which we had followed on 
shipboard during the last few months of our drift. 
We kept our records of wind and weather, of 
soundings and of temperature, which remained in 
the minus thirties for a good many days. We did 
not bother with latitude as we had the land in view 
some sixty to eighty miles away, not distinctly 
visible but plain enough on a clear day when the 
light was fairly good. The light of course came 
