An Eskimo village

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in 2007 with funding from
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AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

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LITTLE JOHN.

Frontispiece

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HIB ME

AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

BY

SAMUEL KING HUTTON
M.D., F.R.G.S.

FELLOW OF THE AMERICAN GEOGRAPHICAL SOCIETY

ILLUSTRATED FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
BY THE AUTHOR

LONDON
SOCTETY: FOR PROMOTING
CHRIS TIAS KNOWLEDGE
NORTHUMBERLAND AVENUE, W.C. 2
NEW YORK AND TORONTO : THE MACMILLAN CO,

TO

MM... FAs

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN

PREFACE

LITTLE John is a middle-aged Eskimo ; a squarely
built, shaggy-headed little man, a clever hunter,
and hard enough to be well and happy among all
the hard weather and rough raw food of an Eskimo
village. John drove my dog-sledge in the winter ;
he was a famous builder of snow houses, and the
most wonderful pathfinder I ever saw.

Once upon a time we were camped in a tiny snow
house of his building, and with much labour because
of the frosty air and the thick gloves I wore I was
writing with my pencil in a notebook. John puffed
at his pipe and watched me.

‘What are you writing ?’’ said he.

‘‘T am writing about this journey,’’ said I.

‘Why do you not write about our village ?’’ said
John.

And so, because of what little John said, I have
taken my pen and am writing about our village.

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CONTENTS

PAGE

PREFACE - - = 2 - Vv
CHAPTER
I. THE BROOK - - - - - TE
Il. THE HEATHEN VILLAGE - - . = 048
III. THE FOUR YOUNG MEN - . - af SA
IV. THE LITTLE CARPENTER ~ ae an (At a
V. CHOOSING A HOME - - - =) ae
VI. A WELCOME - - - - - 44
VII. ZAKKI—THE ISLAND - - - =
VIII. ZAKKI—THE JOURNEY - - - - 55
IX. THE STORY OF AN OIL-STAINED BIBLE - - 60
X. MY OLD BOAT - - - - - 68
XI. AN ESKIMO BROTHER-~ - - ~ - 76
XII. YOUNG KORNELIUS - - - - 85
XIII. A MEMORY OF SLEDGE-DOGS~ - - - 94
XIV. A SNOW HOUSE STORY - - - - 100
XV. THE WONDERLAND COLLECTION - - - 105
XVI. SOLVING A PROBLEM - - - - 109
XVII. BLIND JULIANA GOES TO CHURCH - - 115

XVIII. AN ESKIMO ROMANCE = = = =) Lae

Vil

Vill CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE
XIX. ERNESTINA - - - - - 126
XX. JULIANA’S HOUSE . - - = 7134
XXI. HENRIETTA’S VISIT - - - = erge

XXII. THE OLDEST CHAPEL SERVANT

145
XXIII. HOME - - - - * So NGa

Etat OF ILLUSTRATIONS

LITTLE JOHN - - - - - Frontispiece

FACING PAGE
DIGGING OUT OUR SNOWDRIFT - - a
SEAL HUNTERS AT THE SLOPING BEACH - = eae
OUR VILLAGE - ~ - - ~ - 68
A SNOW HOUSE - - - - - 100
BLUBBER - - - - - - 106
THE HEATHEN WOMAN - - - - - 118

THE OLDEST CHAPEL SERVANT

1
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AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

CHAP EER: I
THE BROOK

FroM the window of the room where the first jot-
tings for this book were written I could see the
Eskimo women doing their laundry. And the Eskimo
women have a queer way of washing clothes.

But let me explain, first, that I was sitting in my
room in the hospital at Okak, on the island of
Kivalek, off the coast of Labrador, in latitude 57°40’.
Not many yards away stood the church, and be-
tween the hospital wall and the tower of the church
ran the brook. That is to say, it ran in the summer-
time ; and in a flat rock-pool outside my window the
women used to do their washing. Their way of
doing it, as I said, was queer. They wetted the
clothes, spread them on a rock, and rubbed them
over with soap, rolled them into a bundle, dropped
them into the pool—and trampled on them.

And so I could see them from my window. A
strange sight: women standing ankle-deep in a
pool, tramping, swaying from one foot to the other,
tramping, tramping, tramping. Oh, the queer
sight ! Some of them are smoking pipes and look
anything but lovely ; some of them carry babies in
their hoods, and lull them to sleep with the tramp-

EE

12 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

ling. Watch that fat little fellow. How he loves it !
His sleepy head nods from side to side, he nestles
deeper in the deep, snug hood, and his mother goes
on with her trampling.

And the women are talking. Eh, how they
chatter ! Their tongues go a-clacketting outside my
window—chatter, chatter, chatter—loud and shrill,
with many a burst of laughter.

They are happy at their washing are those
women.

Sometimes they sing and sway to the singing—
tramp, tramp, tramp—to Sankey’s tunes and harsh,
long Eskimo words ; but the thought of it brings a
lump to the throat, does it not? For the old for-
bears of those women, those women singing
Sankey’s hymns, were heathen and wild, the
mothers and wives of murderers ! And so the women
go on with their washing, singing, chattering, sway-
ing, trampling, and the brook rustled and tumbled
outside my window, and by day and by night I could
hear the sound of the water among the rocks and
the stones.

But the brook does not always run; it freezes in
October, or even sooner. Already in September it
is trickling and splashing between icy banks, and in
October it comes oozing over a deep bed of ice. In
November it is frozen solid, and instead of bringing
buckets for water, the women come with sacks and
carry home chopped ice. Long after the brook had
ceased to rustle, and long after the women had given
up their trampling in the rock-pool—driven away by

THE BROOK 13

the ice—I could hear the sound of chopping. Chop-
ping and chattering, for the sight of a boy with a
hatchet would bring the women scattering from their
doorways, like a flock of hens at feeding-time. The
boy chopped and the women chattered, and I used
to see them from my window filling their sacks and
kettles with the broken ice ; never in a great hurry,
for the Eskimos are a leisurely folk.

The brook is a tame little thing in the summer-
time, when the women trample at their washing ;
but in the spring, when the snows begin to melt, and
the sunshine warms the poor, frozen earth a little,
that same brook is a raging torrent. One year it
burst its banks on a Sunday afternoon, as little
John, my sledge-driver, could tell you. John was
enjoying a Sunday afternoon snooze ; lying on his
bed in his shirt sleeves, digesting, I have no doubt,
a very good dinner of raw seal-meat. He was
awakened, all of a sudden, by a thunderous roar;
the water was cascading down the hillside and beat-
ing on the back wall of his hut, flinging stones and
lumps of frozen snow, and making the house shake.
The little man must have rubbed his eyes as he
awoke, for the furniture was all afloat. The house
was half full of water, wavelets were lapping the
legs of the high bedstead, boxes, stools, pots,
and pans, were careering around in a whirlpool,
and the rattle and the clatter must have been out-
rageous.

That was the time when the avalanche came.
Each year, as the springtime came, we used to call

14 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

as many of the Eskimos as could be spared from the
hunting and set them to digging out the brook.
With spades and hatchets and great snow-knives
they dug a channel for the stream, sometimes thirty
feet down from the top of the drift ; they loaded
their sledges with the blocks that they were chop-
ping, and sent them sailing away to the beach where
the tides were beginning to creep and rustle under
the thick sea ice. All this was a costly business ; and
we thought, with an eye to economy, to give the
brook its way, and let it make a channel for itself.
So we did; and day by day I watched the water
trickling over the edge of the drift ; and day by day
I saw the people come with their kettles and their
buckets to catch the running water. We forgot that
the stream was boring a way beneath the drift. On
that Sunday afternoon a little Eskimo boy was
seated on the top of the drift, scooping for himself
a drink of water ; there came a great roar of sound,
and with a whirl of snow the great drift went raging
down to the frozen beach. It passed my window ;
the walls shook, the railings were torn from their
sockets, and water was splashing and foaming about
the tower of the church. We rushed out ; nobody
was hurt, but there, away on the beach, sat a be-
wildered small boy, looking around him, and grop-
ing with his tin mug for a drink.

So much for the brook. I seem to have said a
good deal about it ; you might even think that I am
wasting your time, but the brook is the very heart
of this story.

Now let me tell you how that is.

DIGGING OUT OUR

SNOW

DRIFT.

es
a

Facing p. 14

THE BROOK 15

By the side of the stream a little path goes wind-
ing up the hillside. Away behind the houses it goes,
towards the swampy ground that fills the uplands. I
was always fascinated by that little path. Where
was the end of it? That seemed a proper question
to put to little John, the sledge-driver ; so I put it
to him. His answer was about as satisfying as an
answer may well be—no long, wordy explanations,
no ‘‘ifs’’ and ‘‘buts’’ and ‘‘perhapses’’ and
‘‘ might-bes.”’ :

‘“Come and see,’’ said little John.

So I put on my blanket smock, or dickey, or
jumper—or whatever you may care to call the
Eskimo garment—for the wind was keen, even on a
summer afternoon when the women were trampling
at their washing, and I followed little John.

But, oh, for a pair of Eskimo legs! The little
man went trotting on, sure-footed among the stones,
while I came following after, stumbling and panting.
We climbed the hillside, and the deep-worn little
path led us beside the swamp.

That swamp was the home of the gnats ; their
buzzing sounded like the sighing of the wind, and
but for my veil I should have been eaten alive. John
had a short, black pipe in his mouth, and was sur-
rounded by a barrage of tobacco smoke through
which no gnat could go. We trotted on.

We crossed the top of the island and began to go
down towards the sea; a gentle breeze from the
west met us, and the gnats fell back before it. Our
well-worn path went winding on and lost itself before

us in the shingly beach of a lovely little bay. John

16 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

is no poet: ‘‘ Fine place for seals,’’ said he, as he
waved his stumpy pipe towards the view.

As for myself, I was entranced with the beauty of
the scene : the sloping hillside, the gentle curve of
the bay, the waves lapping and foaming on the
beach, the snow-capped mountains of the mainland
in the distance, and the sunshine on the blue water.
It was a lovely scene. You hardly think, perhaps,
of loveliness in Labrador, but there it was, for God,
the great Artist, can make beauty of mere rocks and
water, ice and sky and sunshine.

But there was more than beauty in the scene ;
there was something that seemed strange. The hill-
side was strewn with mounds, as though some army
had made an old encampment there.

Right down to the pebbly beach the mounds
seemed to straggle—square heaps of turf much of
a size and scattered here and there. I made to go
towards them, but John would have none of it.
‘‘Tglovinit,’’ he said ; ‘‘ old ruined houses, those,”’
and set his course towards the sea. He would not
go among the heaps; he seemed half-frightened ;
they were eerie, uncanny. He did not like the place.
‘Come and see the beach,’’ he said, ‘‘ where the
skin canoes are launched and where we bring the
seals’’ ; and would have led me away. But I went
wandering among the heaps, in spite of John; ‘‘ old
ruined houses,’’ were they? then I wanted to see
them. They seemed to be square mounds of turf,
all overgrown with coarse grass and weeds. Some
had the shape of huts; there was a hollow in the
middle where the floor had been, but the snows and

THE BROOK 14

the rains had washed the walls down, and they were
mostly filled. In some I could see a gap where the
door had been. Here and there were bits of flint,
old broken knives, and tools ; on one floor there was
a litter of shells, the relics of some long-forgotten
feast. Fragments of rotten driftwood were bedded
in the walls, marking the place where old rafters had
held the heavy roofs of turf. I could picture the
mounds as homes. It was a long-deserted village.

I turned and followed John again ; our backs were
to the crumbling village, and our faces set for home,
but in my mind there was a picture.

CHAPTER II
THE HEATHEN VILLAGE

A HUNDRED and fifty years ago that hillside strewn
with mounds was an Eskimo village; those heaps
were homes, homes where real people lived, people
whose bones you might see under the stones in the
ancient graveyard near by. Up that sloping, pebbly
beach the hunters carried their canoes and dragged
their catch of seals. There was feasting in those
mound-like huts. There, of an evening, the people
squatted in aring, with the pot of meat or the freshly
killed seal in the middle. They hacked the meat
with knives of flint ; they talked of the doings of
the day, and the hunter told of the catching of the
seal. With graphic gestures and flowing words he
pictured the dancing waves, the tumbling canoe, the
sleek head peering, the sudden swift harpoon, the
tussle, and the triumphant home-coming.

The villagers crowded in until the hut was filled
to overflowing. With a nod of thanks they fed and
went away, only to make room for more and more
comers, until the meat was done.

The little children crouched against the wall,
chewing such morsels as their parents might fling.
And in the midst the dreaded sorcerer stalked in, a
weird and filthy fellow, bedaubed and betasselled.
A silence fell upon the company ; they made a place
for him beside the bowl of meat. The host chose

18

THE HEATHEN VILLAGE 19

out the choicest bits, for this awesome being must
be fed and pampered—and woe betide the unhappy
hunter who did not treat him well. The feasting
over, the people sit around in the dim and smoking
light of a seal-oil lamp, talking in undertones. The
sorcerer speaks ; a silence falls.

The little children shudder ; they sob and whimper
in their terror, until their mother smacks them into
quietness.

Perhaps a wind is rising, a storm is brewing. The
sorcerer thumps his seal-hide drum and begins to
chant in a nasal voice. Maybe he has a grudge
against some unhappy fellow. He points to him with
a grimy finger and chants and points again.

‘“ There is the fellow,’’ he sings, ‘‘ who is mak-
ing the storm. He forgot to give me meat when he
caught a seal, and the Spirit of the Storm is angry.
There will be bad weather, bad weather ; no more
seals for many days. You will be hungry—hungry
—hungry ’’—and he thumps his drum and howls
aloud, and at the pointing finger the unlucky man
accused betakes himself slinkingly into the night.
The little children whine and shiver, the strong
hunters tremble, and with a final scowl at the com-
pany in general the sorcerer gathers up his bones
and his drum and stalks majestically away to his
own abode.

There were dismal doings in that heathen village.
True, there was a rude hospitality ; the hungry were
fed. Any who had not might freely eat with those
who had, but beyond this there was little that
savoured of love or kindliness.

20 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

There was a grim honesty. Each man’s tools and
weapons and canoe were sacred to his own use, but
there was lust, and greed, and hatred. There were
bitter feuds and no forgiveness. There was murder,
too.

One man in that ancient village took a dislike to
his wife; he threatened her, he followed her with
eyes in which she could read the will to kill her. She
lived in daily terror, but she served him in her
strange, devoted way.

There came a day when the weather seemed
good. ‘‘Come,’’ said the man, ‘‘we will hunt
together.’’ The woman gathered a morsel of food,
and between them they dragged their little sledge
over the snow-covered land into the wilds of the
island, where the land was all strewn with boulders
and birds were to be found. ‘‘ Wait,’’ he said,
‘‘and sit upon this stone, and I will hunt birds with
my bow and arrow.’ But he took his heavy har-
poon with him, the harpoon that is only used for
seals and walrus, and the woman knew that she was
doomed.

She sat upon the boulder stone, and the man
went away to look for birds. As soon as he was out
of sight she took off her smock, with its great droop-
ing hood, and set it on the stone where she had sat.
She stuffed it with snow to make it keep its shape,
and then she hid behind a rock to watch. Presently
the husband came creeping up, sly and furtive,
dodging from one boulder to the next ; slowly, slowly
coming nearer, until he was within range of the fling
of a harpoon. He raised the weapon to his shoulder,

THE HEATHEN VILLAGE 21

poised it, and with a mighty thrust sent it whizzing
through the air. It struck the sitting figure straight
between the shoulders and bowled it over.

The man fled ; he dared not come nearer to see
what he had done. It was enough for him ; he had
slain his wife. Back to the village he went, taking
his time, and hunting birds upon the way.

No sooner was he out of sight than the woman
gathered up her fallen smock, shook the snow from
it, and put it on; and, with the harpoon upon her
shoulder, ran at the top of her speed to her home.
There she told her story, showed the hole in the
back of her smock, showed the harpoon, and then,
with the house full of neighbours, sat waiting. It
was late in the evening when the man returned, and
at the sound of his footsteps the woman crept into
the darkness under the wall and crouched hiding
behind the others. The man came in and flung upon
the floor the birds which he had caught. Nobody
moved.

‘““ Where is your wife ?’’ said one.

‘* Ai, ai’’ (Alas !), said the man, ‘‘this is an un-
happy day, for my wife is lost. We had hunted
together and eaten together, when there came a
storm and she lost her footing in the darkness of it
and fell over a precipice and was killed. I have
spent much time looking for her, but darkness
came, and I was weary and cold and could do no
more, and my wife is lost. Alas, my poor wife !’’

With this he broke into loud and violent lamenta-
tions, while the company sat around in stony silence.
He rocked his body to and fro and wailed, but, rais-

22 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

ing his head, he suddenly caught sight of the
woman, who had crept from her hiding-place to con-
front him. The neighbours waited. With a yell of
terror—for he thought he saw a ghost—the
wretched man fled into the night and was seen no
more.

This is one of the stories Juliana told me, gathered
from the lore of her father and grandfather ; Juliana,
the schoolmistress of our village and nurse in the
little mission hospital that stands by the brookside
and under the shadow of the church tower ; Juliana,
a Christian woman and a leader of her people, but a
descendant of the folk who lived in that heathen vil-
lage, and carrying in her memory some of the lore
of those old times. You shall meet Juliana again, my
reader, and I have told the story to give you a
glimpse of the sort of life that was lived in that old
heathen village, that village that is to-day no more
than a rocky hillside dotted with grass-grown
mounds.

Many a time did I wander among those mounds
and dig in their crumbling walls. They seemed quiet
and strange, with their reminders of olden times, but
stranger still was the old burying-place of the people
of that village, hard by upon a stony waste, hidden
behind a wall or rock. There you may see the stony
heaps, under which the bones of those forgotten
people lie. You may peer between the chinks and
see them, moss-grown and bleached, and close be-
side are the heaps of stones that cover the belong-
ings of the dead. Here a hunter’s tomb, with arrows
and harpoon ; here a woman’s bones are laid, with

THE HEATHEN VILLAGE 23

cooking pot and knives, and scraper for skins, near
to her ghostly hand; there the burying-place of a
little child, with childish toys piled up—toy spears
and lamp and cooking pot—with which the little one
had played long years ago. A strange, sad sight,
but it seems that those old heathen folk believed in a
future life, for they thought that the hunter would
like his tools close by him where he lay, and the
woman her pots and the little child his toys. And
they still believe, do some of the people, that the
hunter hunts and the housewife cooks, and the child
plays when none are near. I asked one weird old
man about it ; did he really believe it ?

He stared at me aghast! ‘‘Hush!’’ he said,
and held a warning finger and shook a reproving
head. ‘‘ Hush! I have heard them hunting in the
night! Hush! I have seen their footprints in the
snow |”

CHAPTER III
THE FOUR YOUNG MEN

IF it had been your fortune to live in the year 1752
and to be at the London Docks on the morning of
the 17th of May, you might have seen a strange and
moving sight. You might, indeed, have witnessed
the beginning of a great adventure.

Picture the scene.

A small schooner lies against the wall, swaying
gently with the tide. You can see the name,
‘““Hope,’’ painted on the bow, and “‘ Hope of
London ’’ on the stern. Decks are all a-bustle, sails
are being shaken loose, busy hands are making
ready for the loosing of ropes and casting off of
moorings.

Farewells are being said; there seems to be a
moment of prayer, for heads are bared and rough
hands folded. A party of gentlemen and ladies, clad
in the garments of the city folk of two hundred years
ago, step across from schooner to quay and wave
‘“ God-speed ’’ to those on board. The Hope moves
slowly down the dock, aided by much hauling of
ropes and pushing of boat-hooks, and aided, too, by
not a little shouting.

The schooner glides into the river and the wind
fills her sails ; her journey is begun. Look! A little

roup of four is gathered on the deck, waving fare-
well ; the little knot of city folk stand watching. The
24

THE FOUR YOUNG MEN 25

Hope glides slowly out of sight ; the watchers on
the wharf turn homewards. The great adventure
has begun.

All this may seem a little mysterious, but there is
no need for mystery. The explanation is this :

The schooner Hope was under the care of a
Christian captain. He was a hardy seafaring man
who had travelled deep waters and had seen much
of the world. In the course of his journeyings he had
been upon a trading voyage to Greenland, and his
heart had been touched by the sight of the patient
missionaries and their little gatherings of rough
Eskimo Christians.

He had seen for himself some of the great things
that God was doing for the heathen there ; he had
talked with the missionaries, and he had said:
‘“ There are other Eskimos, people like these Green-
landers, living farther off still, upon the frozen coast
of Labrador ; surely they should hear the Gospel
too.”’

In due time his ship came to the Port of London,
and there he spoke his mind among the Christian
folk whom he met. ‘‘Can we not,’’ he said,
‘‘ charter a ship to go upon a voyage to Labrador ?
We could trade in oil and furs, and we could carry
missionaries to preach the Gospel to the Eskimos.
It is a good work, and no one could lose anything
by it.”’

Three Christian merchants put their heads to-
gether ; they talked the thing over; they put their
hands into their pockets ; and so it came about that
the Hope was chartered, and so it was that she

26 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

sailed from London on that bright May morning in
the year 11752.

And the four who waved from the deck? They
were the four young men who had come forward as
volunteers to be the first missionaries to the Eskimos
of Labrador.

Their great adventure had begun.

If you have crossed the North Atlantic Ocean,
and particularly if you have made that crossing in a
small ship, you may have some idea, perhaps, of the
experiences of those four young men.

Myself, I have made the passage in the Harmony,
a tiny ship of two hundred and twenty tons, and have
spent three-and-twenty days upon the way, and have
known what it means to be storm-tossed and weary,
and day by day to see nothing but tumbling waters
high as houses, and to lie awake at night and listen
to the weird cries of the sailors as they hauled upon
the ropes. I thought it long that I should be three-
and-twenty days upon the sea, but the Hope was
only a little schooner, and it was on the 11th of July,
all but eight weeks after leaving London, that the
coast of Labrador was sighted. Eight weeks of the
trackless ocean, with sometimes storm and tossing,
and sometimes, maybe, anxiety and peril! Can you
wonder that those four young men were glad to see
the bleak and rocky land?

On the 31st of July the schooner came to anchor
in a sheltered cove; high hills, patched with snow
on their upper slopes, rose to west and north. The
lower hillsides were green with grass and trees, and,
best of all, the beach showed marks of camping-

THE FOUR YOUNG MEN 24

places and posts where boats had been moored. The
young men were full of delight at this pleasant scene,
for pleasant it was in the pure, clear air and the
morning sunshine, and, maybe, it was the hope that
beat in their breasts, and, maybe, it was the thought
of the stout little schooner Hope which had brought
them safely to the land of their choice. Whatever
the reason, ‘‘ ‘ Hopedale,’’’ they said, “‘shall be
the name of this place.’’

But there was no time for sentiment. The summer,
they knew, would be short ; the ship must be un-
loaded and the goods and chattels unpacked, for the
four young men had reached their journey’s end,
and this pleasant place in which the schooner had
cast anchor was to be the scene of their life’s work.
They had reached their destination, the first mis-
sionaries to the Eskimos of Labrador. ‘‘ Many hands
make light work.’’ The season was late, and all
hands turned to the task. Boxes, barrels, planks, and
bricks, all were hauled ashore in the schooner’s boat.
Sailors and missionaries alike took a hand in the
work of unloading.

Day by day, as the Hope lay at anchor, bands of
Eskimos came in their skin canoes, offering skins
and furs and oil in barter ; and ‘‘ Alas !’’ said those
four young men, “‘if only we could speak the Eskimo
tongue, so as to tell these poor wild Eskimos of a
Saviour’s love. But we will learn ; we will learn !’’

You may like to know what sort of things those
four young men had brought with them.

Well, first, a little flour and ship’s biscuit and
salted pork for food ; but also muskets and powder

28 AN ESKIMO: VILLAGE

and shot and fishing lines, ‘‘for,’’ said they, ‘‘ surely
we can hunt and fish for our food and save expense
to those at home who send us.’’ Clothing, too, they
had brought, but not much of that to spare ; ‘‘ for,”’
said they, ‘‘ we will dress like the Eskimos, in skins
and furs.’’

Then, bricks and mortar and joists and planks,
with tools and nails for building. Yes, they would
build a little house to live in, for they wanted some
fixed dwelling-place ; and you may imagine them
happily sawing and hammering at their planks and
joists, and laying the bricks of their chimneys ; for,
let me tell you, that only a little while ago I held
reverently in my hand a brick from the ruins of that
house, the house built on the shore of the little bay
at Hopedale by those four young men.

Remember, all this is in the summer days of 1752.
The shores of that little bay are now deserted, and
the house has fallen in ruins and crumbled away, but
this one brick was brought home by the captain of
the mission ship a few years ago—perhaps the last
remaining relic of this great adventure.

And another thing those four young men had
brought—a parcel of garden seeds. ‘‘ Surely,’’ said
they, ‘‘this land of Labrador is not all rocks and
ice ; there must be soil there, and maybe the good
God will cause His sun to shine even there, and
maybe He will cause our garden seeds to grow. We
will take seeds—lettuce and turnips and cabbages.”’
Strange act of faith and common sense! Sure
enough, they found soil upon the sloping hillside,
and there they planted the seeds. I almost think

THE FOUR YOUNG MEN 29

they planted them on the very first day, so as to
make the most of the bleak, short summer ; for very
soon, we read, the seeds began to grow. But, alas,
the night frost came and nipped the tender shoots ;
and so the first planting of a garden on the barren
Labrador was a failure.

But this act of faith, this planting of a garden
in sO unpromising a land, was a good example for
later comers.

Nowadays every mission station has its garden,
and you may see, if you have the good fortune to be
there, potatoes and cabbages and lettuce and turnips
all flourishing with amazing hardihood. True, you
might also see the aged Eskimo widows earning an
honest wage by covering the potato plants with
sacks in the cool of the evening, and uncovering
them again when the morning sun begins to shine,
you might see the grave and bearded missionary
putting empty tins over his cabbage shoots, for the
plants must be nursed if they are to escape the
frosts.

But the four young men had set the example, and
others have reaped the benefit. My own lot was cast
in this village of ours—a favoured place, where the
gardens are sheltered by steep rocks from the worst
of the winds. But even in the far north, where no
trees grow, the indefatigable missionary has got a

arden. I was walking with the missionary at
Chidley, the northernmost tip of Labrador. We
came upon a little railed space, not much bigger
than a child’s cot. In all seriousness I asked, as I
pointed to it: “Is this the grave of your favourite

30 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

dog?’’ ‘‘No,’’ said the missionary, ‘‘that is my
garden ; come and see it.’’ I went, and I stood be-
side the little palings and looked upon the wizened
turnip-tops and the pale, anzmic rhubarb, and I
wondered at the faith of the man who could set
Nature such a task as to raise garden plants in
such a place as Chidley. “‘I could only scrape
together a very little earth,’’ said the missionary,
‘but if, when you get back to your village, you
could send me one or two barrels full of earth, I
think we could do better !’’

But this is a digression. Let us get back to the
four young men and their great adventure.

CHAPTER IV
THE LITTLE CARPENTER

WE left our four young men busy at the building
of their house ; taking turns, no doubt, to fish from
the rocks, or to go hunting for a chance hare or
ptarmigan or even a seal or bear.

We can imagine them waking in the morning,
and running eagerly to the garden patch to see how
the seeds were faring. We can picture them sitting
in the evenings, talking of friends and of home, and
planning their future work among the Eskimos, or
chatting with the good people of the schooner over
the doings of the voyage. Days passed, the house
was nearly finished, the night frosts were keen, and
summer was drawing to a close, and the captain of
the Hope felt that it was time for him to set his
course for home.

Accordingly, good-byes were said; and the four
young men stood upon the hill and watched the
Hope slide slowly out of sight.

Like the practical men that they were, they
settled to the finishing of their house ; they turned
again to their fishing and hunting, replenishing
their scanty larder and laying in provisions for the
winter.

And again we can imagine them sitting round
their stove in the evenings, reading their Bible by

31

32 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

the dim light of a seal-oil lamp, offering their simple
prayer to God, and commending to Him them-
selves and their future. With hope in their hearts
and singleness of mind they made ready for the
winter, talking of how they would learn the Eskimo
language and go in and out among the natives when
the time came for them to settle in their winter
houses of snow. They were proud and glad of this
great adventure.

And then, to their amazement, the Hope came
sailing back into the bay !

The story of the Hope is soon told.

After leaving Hopedale the captain cruised north-
ward, intending by trading to increase his cargo of
furs and oil and so repay the London merchants for
their venture. Two days after setting forth, a band
of Eskimos met them in their skin canoes and be-
sought them to come on shore for further trade.

The captain and five others went ashore in the
ship’s only boat ; the Hope lay at anchor.

Hours passed, and the shore party did not return.

The mate fired guns for a signal, in case the cap-
tain had missed his way. No answer.

Days passed. No sight or sound of Eskimos or
Europeans.

Snow began to fall. The mate, in despair, drew
up the anchor and returned to Hopedale.

What had happened ?

Long years afterwards the truth came out; the
Eskimos had lured the men ashore and then had
murdered them for the sake of the goods they

THE LITTLE CARPENTER 33

brought. Erhard, the man who had seen Green-
land, and whose thought for the Eskimos had
brought about this expedition ; Erhard, whose one
thought was to bring the Gospel to this forsaken
land, and who had said, ‘‘ This is a good work, no
one can be the loser by it’’; Erhard had lost his
life, and with him the captain and four sailors had
been treacherously slain.

Imagine the consternation of those four young
men at Hopedale. ‘‘ Six of us,’’ said the mate,
‘‘are murdered by the Eskimos. I have not enough
men to work the vessel home. You must return with
me or the ship will be lost.’’

Sad at heart, the four young missionaries talked
it over; they prayed it over. They chose the
greater duty ; theirs was the sacrifice of hopes and
longings ; their duty was to man the ship and see
her safely home to London.

They went on board, and with the autumn gales
beginning and the autumn sea all coated with frost,
they took their turn at the sails and the steering
and all the rough work of the schooner, and at last
the little Hope came into London Docks again. Six
lives had been lost, and the first missionary journey
to Labrador had proved, it seemed, a failure.

News soon spreads, and even in 1752 there were
missionary meetings; and it came about, I know
not exactly in what manner, that the story of this
great adventure reached the ears of a squarely built
little carpenter in a village in Saxony.

The story fired his soul; it filled him with en-

3

34 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

thusiasm. ‘‘If God wills,’’ he said, ‘‘I will go as
a missionary to those same Eskimos.”’

But the time had not come ; he must possess his
soul. Six years he waited, working at his carpentry ;
but through all the waiting his zeal was unquenched.

At last, in the year 1758, Count Zinzendorf, the
head of the Moravian Church, suggested that this
little man should go to Greenland. Our little car-
penter may have been downcast at this. But he was
a hero; he went to Greenland. Now, see the hand
of God in all this. Jens Haven—this was the little
carpenter’s name—went to Greenland and became a
missionary there. He learnt to know the Eskimos
and their ways; he learnt their language, which,
after all, is very like the language of the Eskimos
of Labrador. If the call should come for Jens to
go to Labrador, he was in every way fitted. After
four or five years in Greenland he returned home,
and after a while the call came. The little car-
penter’s dream was coming true; to Labrador he
went, with the Eskimo language on the tip of his
tongue and a suit of Greenland Eskimo clothes in
his box.

There was a wonderful scene when Labrador was
reached. The sight of an Eskimo paddling about in
his skin canoe gave Jens the idea of dressing in his
Greenland clothes ; a sturdy, square-shouldered little
man, he looked every inch an Eskimo. He went
ashore, and greeted the folk in their own language.
‘‘ Aksuse,’’ he said. ‘‘Be strong, every one of
you ’’—the real Eskimo greeting of friendliness and

brotherhood. The people were delighted; they

THE LITTLE CARPENTER 35

shouted for joy. ‘‘ Our friend is come,’’ they said.
‘* Aksunai.’’

They thronged about Jens, feeling him, stroking
him, peering in his face ; and all the while he spoke
to them in words they understood. The ice was
broken ; the mission to the Eskimos of Labrador was
begun.

Would the greeting have been like this if Jens had
never been to Greenland ? We cannot know, but we
may doubt it. The hand of God was in this. Jens
had learnt the language, he knew the Eskimos and
their ways, his very dress and appearance made for
confidence ; the people loved him from the first.

Our village was not the first that Jens and his
companions built. They began their labours at Nain,
ninety miles south of the place where I had seen the
mounds upon the slope; but I have seen that first
mission station which Jens Haven helped to build ;
I have trodden the paths on which Jens walked a
hundred and fifty years ago; nay, I believe I have
eaten of vegetables from the garden that Jens helped
to make. His is the great name in the Labrador
Mission. Jensingoak, ‘‘ Our little Jens,’’ the people
called him.

And is he forgotten?

Not many years ago there came a man to our
village, a heathen man from a tribe in the north.
Like many another Eskimo, he had wandered south-
wards in the hope of meeting lost relatives who had
moved towards the south long years before. He
stayed in our village through the winter ; he went to
the meetings in the church; he said that he, too,

36 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

would like to be a Christian. In the little village
church he was baptised. I was present at that
solemn and moving service.

‘“ What name,’’ said the missionary,
do you choose ?”’

‘‘T will be called Jens,’’ said the Eskimo; and
Jens he was named.

¢

‘what name

CHAPTER V
CHOOSING A HOME

So it came about that in the days when those
mounds on the hillside slope were homes, and when
the old ruined houses were a heathen village, the
missionaries had come to Labrador.

Seven years after their first landing at Nain they
found their way to that little bay ; they drew their
boat up that shingly beach ; they walked among the
huts of the village; they talked to the people who
crowded, half in fear, about them. ‘‘ We are your
friends,’ said Jens, ‘‘we are your friends.’’ The
rough folk made the missionaries welcome ; they
haled them to their huts and fed them on their
choicest. Think of that feasting! Poor mission-
aries! Imagine yourself sitting on the floor of a
badly lit and worse ventilated Eskimo turf-house,
eating the fishy-flavoured meat handed to you by
fingers innocent of washing excepting the dippings
in the sea at the hunting of seals! But this was
Eskimo friendliness, and in the name of friendship
—nay, rather, for the sake of the Master they
served—those early missionaries would endure all
things, not alone the greater things of pain and hard-
ship and terrible climates, but the lesser things of
dirt and vermin and nauseous food.

‘* All honour to the pioneers,’’ say I ; *‘ all honour
to the pioneers in whatsoever land ; they endured

3F

38 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

hardness as good soldiers ; they suffered things that
we know not of.’’

So the missionaries ‘made friends with the
Eskimos, and knew that their labour would not be
in vain.

Followed by a gaping crowd they wandered
among the huts, seeking for a place on which to
build their dwelling-house and some day their
church. Four things they looked for; four things
they had been taught to look for by the counsel of
seafarers and the wise thought of Mission Board.

First, a safe anchorage for the ship.

They went in faith, those early pioneers, but in
their hearts they hoped that a ship would be found
each year to come and bring them news from home
and some supply of food. They would do their best
to live as the Eskimos lived ; they would learn to eat
seal’s flesh and whale and dried fish; they would
hunt for their own larder, and so save buying ; they
would read and live by the light of seal-oil lamps ;
they would make their own furniture ; they would
trust for warmth to a little iron stove, burning such
drift-wood and branches as they could gather. Even
to-day you may catch glimpses of the thrifty ways
of the pioneers. The first night that I slept ashore
in Labrador I had in my bedroom—the guest-room
in a mission-house—a wooden bedstead, a wooden
washstand, and a wooden chair with a leathern seat
—-home-made and solid, all of them.

I turned the chair upside down out of curiosity,
and on the framework I found carved the letter

‘“K”’ and the date ‘‘1804.’’ So I knew that the

gf *d suroey

“HOVAA ONIdOTS ZHL LV SYALNNH-1VaSs

CHOOSING A HOME 39

chair had been made by old Kohlmeister, who made
a famous journey to the heathen of the north in
1809. I was sleeping in Kohlmeister’s room, and
sitting on the chair of his making, a chair sound and
strong after a hundred years. When I asked about it
all, ] was shown a tin mould ; and I was told that in
the olden days the missionaries used to get deer’s
fat and make candles for themselves !

Yes, the sacrifice, the unselfishness, the frugal-
mindedness, the simplicity of purpose ; these things
are something to admire. They took but little
thought for clothing; they would dress like the
Eskimos, in sealskins and furs ; but I have been told
that one year at least the ship took out a bale of
cloth as a gift, and every missionary had a cut of
it to make him a suit of clothes. Up and down the
coast, all dressed alike! Laughable, maybe, but
almost sad—for those old pioneers worked without
pay ; their reward was that they should have food
and shelter—and the joy of preaching the Gospel
to the Eskimos.

So they hoped that a ship would come, at least
once a year ; and they must have a safe anchorage.

A second thing was a beach for the boats, for the
ship could not anchor off a rocky coast where land-
ing was unsafe ; there must be sand or shingle for
the safe beaching of boats.

Well, the old heathen village offered that, though
a ship’s captain might prefer a better anchorage for
his vessel.

And a third thing, a shelter from the north-west
wind.

40 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

Those old missionaries had heard of the north-
west wind. It is almost a proverb; ‘‘ Attuarnek,’’
the Eskimos call it.

It is an inconceivable thing ; to imagine it is im-
possible ; you must see it, hear it, feel it. It comes
from the frozen plains and valleys of the north-west,
storming along with one ceaseless roar and filling
the world with snow. No living thing can face it.
Wooden buildings shake and sway, and even move
from their foundations ; snow houses quiver and are
frayed thin; travellers are lost. I journeyed by
sledge one day after such a storm, in freezing,
bracing, sunlit air, under a cloudless blue sky. The
snowy floor was driven hard as stone, and the village
we reached was lamenting the loss of one of its
young men. Man, sledge, dogs, all were lost ; not a
sign could be found, though search-parties were
everywhere. Weeks later, when the snows began to
melt, a chance traveller saw a poor, pathetic hand
above the snow ; and there, beneath the frozen floor,
lay the man with his sledge and his dogs—caught
and buried by the awful storm.

So, if life was to be possible, a sheltered spot
must be found. Again, the old heathen village-slope
would do, for it lay beneath the shelter of a rocky
wall.

And a fourth thing, a stream of running water.

This was, above all things, necessary, for while
Eskimos seem able to drink melted snow, fresh spring
water is necessary for the health of folks from other
lands. But the heathen village on the hillside had
no running stream ; nothing other than the snow or

CHOOSING A HOME 41

the stagnant water from the moorland pools. So the
missionaries talked it over. This will not do,’’ they
said. ‘‘ However much we would like to live among
these heathen folk, it will not do. We must have
running water, and we must find a safer anchorage
for the ship.’’

They climbed to the height of the island, and, like
the great man of old, they viewed the landscape
o’er. It seemed but a sorry sort of promised land
on which they gazed—rocks and swamps, stunted
and bewizened trees, grey rocks patched with snow,
a sullen sea strewn with icebergs—no crops, no
flocks, a bare, bleak land. But below them lay a
deep, small bay, sheltered by massive hills, a stony
beach circled it, and the missionaries, as they stood,
could see the glint of running water as the brook
went tumbling down to the sea.

Now at last our brook comes into its own.

) Uhat is: the) place, *-they said; there let as
build our house and church, by the side of the brook.
It is but two or three miles from the heathen village ;
we can go to and fro and preach to these poor folk.”’
And the captain of the ship agreed. ‘‘It is a good
anchorage, and well sheltered,’’ he said.

So there, by the banks of the brook in that
sheltered bay, they laid the foundations of their
home, and the sound of saw and hammer rang
among the silent rocks.

They found fish in the deep waters—great fine
cod and fat sea-trout. There were birds and hares
upon the hillsides ; there were eatable berries among
the stunted scrub upon the slopes. They did not

42 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

know that for seven weeks in the heart of the winter
the high hill on the south would keep the sun away ;
they did not find it out till winter came, and then
they made a joke of it, a joke that has lasted a
hundred and fifty years !

For the one on whose window the sun first shines
after the seven weeks of gloom must find a meal of
tea and cake for all the others—and I, among
others, have had to provide that tea-party for the
dwellers in the mission-house, because the hospital
was a tall building and its windows caught the sun
before the others.

So the pioneer missionaries digged and built and
hammered by the side of our brook—the same brook
in which we see the women trampling and chattering
over the washing of clothes.

They made haste to get their house built ; but
every day they found time to climb the hill by the
track beside the brook, and walk by the side of the
swamp to the heathen village, there to sit in stuffy,
heathen huts and talk to the people about God and
Christ and slowly to bring the Bible to them in their
own strange dialect. And thus the brook was the
beginning of the new village, and the feet of the early
missionaries were the first to tread the little path
along which John the Driver led me on that summer
afternoon.

Curiosity played its part, for surely there was
much talk at night-time in the heathen huts about
the strange doings over by the brook. ‘*‘ What queer
things are the strangers doing,’’ said the heathen
folk ; ‘‘they are building a great house—a mighty

CHOOSING A HOME 43

iglo—such as was never seen in our land before. Let
us go and see this great sight.’’ So the heathen
people trudged over the narrow path and watched
the missionaries at work. Wide-eyed with wonder
they saw the buildings grow—and as they worked
the missionaries talked to the folk. A friendliness
sprang up. ‘‘ The strangers are good folk,’’ said
the Eskimos ; ‘‘they are our friends.’’ The brook
was coming into its own. And the path? First one,
and then another, of those dwellers in the old-time
heathen village across the swamp would say: “‘ Let
us move our homes and live on Okak Bay, where
the strangers are with their mighty house.’’ And
you may see in your mind a picture of the people
marching in single file—father, mother, sons and
daughters, little toddlers, burdened with weapons
and household goods, making their way along the
path by the side of the brook to build new homes
on the Okak beach.

So the little path was the beginning of our village.
A Christian village grew, and the old heathen homes
were deserted, and the little track, now grass-grown
and almost forgotten, has been the hallowed way
by which the heathen people found Christ.

CHAPTER WV!
A WELCOME

So the village grew. Close to the brook, and all
along the line of the beach, the Eskimos built their
huts ; and when all the line of the beach was filled
they straggled up the hillside. First they were huts
of turf, like the old heathen homes; but as years
passed little homes of wood sprang up, with boarded
floors and windows to let the sunshine in, and clean-
liness began to take the place of the gloom and filth
of heathen days. And this was the village, this
village of Okak, in which I set foot more than a
hundred and thirty years after the first villagers had
trodden the path across the ridge of the island to
build their homes by the brook.

I was sitting in my little room on one of my first
days there when there came a timid tap at the door.
A very timid tap it was, hardly enough to rouse me
from my writing, and I had to pause and listen
awhile before I was sure that there had been a tap
at all. It came again, the gentle tapping of fingers,
and this time the door slowly opened and a wrinkled
old face came peeping round. A pair of old eyes
blinked a little at the sudden light ; then the door
opened a little wider, and in came Ruth.

Although I was a newcomer I knew her well.
She had stood among the crowd upon the jetty to
meet the boat when I landed; she had pressed for-

44

A WELCOME 45

ward to shake my hand, and here she was in my
room. Can you imagine her? A little, square, squat
figure of a woman, with a broad face and a few
wisps of grey hair straggling from under the
checked handkerchief that covered her head. She
was wearing a fine calico smock, with hood and
long tails gorgeously embroidered in wools, and a
black skirt reaching to the tops of her boots. The
boots deserve a line to themselves—white bottoms,
black tongues and leggings, stitched together by
those nimble old fingers with incredible neatness.

And this was Ruth, this quaint figure that stood
in the doorway of my room on that autumn after-
noon. She reached for her handkerchief and
mopped her face; she looked rather flustered, as
though she had something of importance on her
mind. She stuffed the handkerchief back into the
wide leg of her boot, and when I caught sight of
the assortment of matches and and patchwork and
tape there, I knew that Ruth used the leg of her
boot as a pocket in the true Eskimo fashion. I am
afraid, just a little afraid, that as she pulled up her
skirt to fumble in this mysterious pocket I had a
glimpse of a well-used tobacco pipe peeping fur-
tively out of the other boot. But, as I say, I will
not commit myself to that ; it was only a passing
glimpse, and, besides, it is a good many years ago
now, so we will let the pipe go.

When the handkerchief was safely in its place,
Ruth straightened herself up and smoothed
her skirt. ‘‘Aksunai’’ (Be strong), she said.
‘‘ Ahaila’’ (Yes, the same to you), said I. That

46 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

is the proper Eskimo greeting for all times of day ;
and now that the preliminaries were over, I ex-
pected Ruth to sit down and get to business. So
many of the people had come with baskets to sell,
or with skin purses and gloves and queer wall-
pockets all decorated with bead work, and native
dolls and little models of sledges, and all manner
of things to ‘‘truckey’’ (trade) for stockings or
skirts or anything wearable, that I fully expected
Ruth to produce something of the same sort. And,
true enough, Ruth was fishing in her hood, as
though some saleable trifle were nestling in its
depths ; but the catch that she made was a surprise
to me, for after a good deal of hunching of
shoulders, and screwing around, and stretching of
arms to fish a little deeper, she brought out a well-
thumbed Eskimo hymn-book.

She rearranged her hood before going any
further, putting her book carefully on the bench
meanwhile ; then she opened the pages with much
deliberation and produced a scrap of paper. This
she handed to me with an air of great consequence,
and straightway walked out of the room without a
word.

“The plot thickens,’’ thought I; “‘ this is some-
thing strange.’’ I could not help smiling at the little
play ; old Ruth was so serious about it all, and so
evidently in earnest, that I wondered what it could
all mean. The quaint little figure moved slowly
and with the utmost dignity out of the doorway,
and I, standing bewildered at the table, unfolded
the scrap of paper and read: ‘‘ Ruth wants to sing

A WELCOME 47

a hymn for you.’’ The handwriting was that of
the missionary. Evidently Ruth had thought that I
might not understand her if she spoke Eskimo, so
she had got her message written down.

While I was studying the paper the door opened
again, and I looked for Ruth. But there was a
pause in the proceedings, and a queer sound of
whispering and scuffling and scraping of feet on
the boards ; then in came old Jafet. Jafet is Ruth’s
husband. And in he came, a feeble old man, peer-
ing and blinking, and obviously propelled from the
rear by Ruth’s encouraging hand. He seemed very
nervous and perhaps a trifle awed ; but in he came,
with a grunt in acknowledgment to my ‘‘ aksunai,”’
and after him came Ruth.

The two old people sat down, and Ruth opened
her hymn-book. She licked her thumb and turned
the pages, and held the book to the light to see the
better, and wiped her spectacles with the tail of
her smock, and turned more pages. She knew what
she wanted, and with a ‘‘h’m’’ to clear her throat
she thrust a share of the book into Jafet’s trembling
hand and began to sing. An energetic nudge from
Ruth’s elbow, and Jafet joined in with his quavering
baritone ; and there I sat, listening to a hymn of
welcome and encouragement from an Eskimo
Darby and Joan. Can you imagine anything more
touching ? I was new to Labrador ; I could speak
no more Eskimo than the mere words of greeting ;
I had, so far, met but few of the people ; but there
sat the old couple, grasping each a corner of the
book, bending their heads low to see the words,

48 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

and singing in perfect tune. Poor old Jafet soon
broke down. He just sat and sobbed, wiping his
eyes with the sleeve of his calico smock ; but Ruth
sang on, clear and true, though her eyes were wet
and her old hands trembled. When the hymn was
finished she said, ‘‘ Nakomék’”’ (I am thankful),
and shook my hand ; then she nudged her husband
and led him quietly home.

Such was my welcome. Old Ruth was a good
hardy type of Eskimo; for years after this little
scene she lived on, eking out an honest living by
plaiting straw mats and baskets, and even in her
old age she was one of the best of the basket workers.
Many a home in England contains specimens of her
work, for she used to send a big boxful to market by
the Harmony (the mission ship) each year.

The great satisfaction of her latter days was that
her son Jeremias is a credit to her : she had brought
him up to be a good and useful man. And her one
trouble was that her eyesight began to fail; she
could no longer see to do that wonderful stitching
that gave her the reputation of being one of the
best boot-makers in our village. And so, when I
called in her little hut to pass the time of day, she
would say to me: ‘‘I cannot work as I used to do ;
my eyes are too old for medicine to cure. Soon, I
think, my Father will call me home.’’

“© Aksunai, Ruth.’’

CHAPTER VII
ZAKKI—THE ISLAND

THIs is the chronicle of a visitor to our village, a
man who had ambition in his soul. His name was
Zakki—short, I suppose, for Zacchaeus, for most
of the Eskimos have Biblical names—and _ his
ambition was to better himself. He was a clever
hunter, was Zakki, and he thought to himself that
if he lived away from other folk he would have things
all to himself and do better. There would be no
competition in the hunting and the fishing, said he ;
he would have a piece of the lonely Labrador all to
himself. So he gathered his belongings together and
made his way to a tiny island. There he built a
wooden hut, and with just his wife and little son for
company he lived the life of a hunter. I am bound
to say that he lived very well. He hunted the seals
with his long harpoon; he sometimes surprised a
white hare; he caught the gentle ptarmigan that
came to feed upon the berries—in fact, in one way
or another he kept the larder well stocked. There
were times, too, when he found a fox in one of his
traps on the hillside. Those were times of rejoicing,
for an Eskimo family is not above making a dinner
of fox flesh, and Zakki’s wife would stretch and dry
the lovely fur, ready for one of the rare visits to the
trading station.

I suppose you might call Zakki’s island a desert

49 4

50 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

island, for anything more bare and bleak you could
hardly imagine. It was nothing like the desert
islands that boys are wont to fancy—coral reefs and
sands, and palm-trees and glorious sunshine. No,
Zakki’s island was only a monster heap of dull, grey
rocks, patched here and there with stunted brush-
wood. But Zakki was well content with his island,
for the seals loved to swim in the shelter of those
rocks, and the brushwood was loaded with whole-
some berries in the autumn. So Zakki was well off.

But there came a time when Zakki lost his wife.
She caught a cold, and was delirious with lung
trouble before they realised that anything was
amiss ; and she was gone before they could get help.
So Zakki was left with his little son, a child of six
years, and in his loneliness the poor man’s fatherly
heart warmed to his son. All the love of his nature
centred on the boy.

And little Zakki was a real Eskimo boy. Even at
six years old he could manage a boat, or set a fox-
trap, or use a gun. If the father was busy about
the house the child would wander off with a home-
made cross-bow, and likely enough come home in
an hour or two brandishing a couple of little birds
which he had shot. Such rewards of his prowess
were, I must say, not very frequent, for a cross-bow
made from a stave of the household flour barrel is
not a very deadly weapon. However, little Zakki
was all the time unconsciously training himself for
the life of a hunter. His father made a constant
companion of him ; they went to the hunt together.

ZAKKI—THE ISLAND 51

When his little legs would not carry him fast
enough, the child used to sit on the sledge, perched
on the top of a load of firewood or astride the body
of a big seal, whooping and chirruping to the dogs.
Zakki watched him tenderly, teaching him all a
hunter’s tricks, and dreaming, no doubt, of a day
when little Zakki would grow up to be a clever hunter
himself, and be the stay and companion of his
father’s old age.

So the days passed, and these two, wrapped up
in one another, lived their simple life ; they camped
together, slept together, they did their own plain
cookery, and they had no other company. When the
day’s work was done, big Zakki used to sit puffing
at his pipe, seeing visions of days to be, while little
Zakki sang and whistled and made toy boats and
sledges. The child was happy, and the father,
wrapped up in his hunting and in the happiness of
his son, began to forget his own loneliness. The
little island began to be a land of happiness, for in
the simple round of Eskimo life Zakki was finding
comfort. Maybe his thoughts strayed at times to
the mound on the hillside, where, beneath a heap of
stones, he had laid his wife to rest ; but his mind
was on his boy, and though the child was but a
little lad of six, he was a clever lad. And what better
can an Eskimo father have than to see his son a
handy fellow, quick to all the ways of the hunt?

One evening they came in after a long day’s
fishing, and the boy threw himself on the rough bed
of deer-skins. He watched his father kindle the fire
and set the pot upon the stove ; he listlessly followed

52 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

with his eyes the humble preparations for the
evening meal.

““Come, Zakki, let us have supper,’’ said his
father.

““No,’’ said the boy; “‘I am tired—too tired
toyeat,’*

The father was troubled ; a chill came over him.
He looked at his son, and realised suddenly how
pale and ill the child was. He picked the tenderest
morsels from the juicy seal-meat stew. ‘‘ Eat this,’’
he said, ‘‘ and then you shall go to bed ; you will be
quite rested in the morning.’’

But morning came, and the little fellow still
seemed tired. He bravely tried to brighten up as
his father talked cheerily of trying a new place for
the cod-fishing, and of a stream away up in the
woods of the mainland where the trout were so
plentiful that little Zakki could catch them with his
hands.

Night after night brought the same perplexity
into the father’s heart: little Zakki was always
tired ; his cheeks were growing hollow and his eyes
seemed big, and he had a strange way of waking
up in the night to cough.

The autumn storms began; it was time for the
seal hunt, but little Zakki was too weak to go. He
stayed at home while the father went out day by
day to his lonely task. And then the truth dawned :
little Zakki was failing ; he was ill with some subtle
sickness beyond the reach of Eskimo home
remedies.

Zakki’s mind was made up at once: he must take

ZAKKI—THE ISLAND 53

his son to the doctor. There was a doctor in the
village of Okak, a hundred and forty miles away ;
there they would go as soon as the sea should freeze
and make the journey possible. To go by boat was
out of the question; the north-east storms were
blowing, and to venture a small boat upon the fringe
of the Atlantic where it laps the coast of Labrador
is a risky thing even in the calm days of August.
It was now late in October, and the swell was roar-
ing over the frosted rocks ; the only hope was that
the sea ice would form early. So the father set
himself to wait, with anxiety gnawing at his heart ;
and the days crawled slowly by.

It was hard to leave the child ; he could scarcely
get out of bed now, but the work must be done.
There was the winter’s food to be thought of—
food for themselves and food for the hungry dogs ;
and day by day the father went out to the seal net,
and hauled it inshore with his own unaided strength,
hoping and praying for the time to pass.

At last December came, and in the early days
the sea began to smoke. A fine white haze lay upon
the water, drifting like a mist before the wind ; and
Zakki knew that the time of ice was near. The
haze lasted for three or four days. There came a
keen, calm moonlight night, and Zakki slept with
a lighter heart, for he had seen the sea setting in
an oily scum. His instinctive knowledge of Nature’s
signs had told him truly, for in the morning there
was no more sea—only a wide stretch of dull grey
ice, tough and elastic. He tried it with his foot,
but it was not yet safe to venture far from shore ;

54 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

he dared not risk little Zakki upon it until another
three or four days had passed.

He spent those days in getting ready for the
journey. He planed and smoothed the runners of
his long sledge, and polished them until they shone ;
he bound up the slack joints, he tapered anew the
lash of his walrus-hide whip ; he strengthened and
patched the dogs’ harness ; and, finally, with little
Zakki’s comfort in his mind, he made a box big
enough for the child to sit in, and lashed a sail to
the four corners to keep out the wind.

CHAPTER VIII
ZAKKI—THE JOURNEY |

Now hope beat high in Zakki’s heart.

The ice was firm and smooth; the long sledge
was ready, with its canvas shelter firmly upon it ;
the dogs were keen for work. And little Zakki
seemed brighter too. He seemed to listen keenly
to his father’s chatter as the work went on; he
watched the packing of the food for the journey—
dried fish and queer hard dough-cakes of Zakki’s
baking for themselves, and a bottle of cod-liver oil
for a relish, and for the dogs a bag of hard dry seal-
meat, chopped into proper pieces and as hard as
stone ; he even laughed when Zakki told him how
he should travel in his own bed upon the sledge
lying snug on the deer-skins in his canvas shelter.
‘*But,’’ said the father, “‘when we come home
you shall run beside the sledge like a man, for you
will be well and strong ; and I will teach you how
to drive the dogs and how to build a house of
snow.”’

It was a bright, cold winter’s morning when the
little party started. The child was too weak to
walk, so Zakki carried him to the sledge and placed
him tenderly in the box, and wrapped him well with
dry, warm skins. Then Zakki took the whip, and
with a crack of the long lash and a shrill ‘‘ Hoo-

55

56 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

eet !’’ he started the dogs on their long trail north-
wards. The going was good; the ice was new and
hard ; the sledge rumbled merrily as the dogs, all
fresh and frisky, trotted on; and with the dawn
breaking grey upon the hills they left their island
behind them.

Zakki did not ride much himself. There were
only seven dogs, and though, alas! little Zakki did
not weigh much, there were other things—clothing
and food and the meat for the dogs—that made the
sledge heavy enough.

So, like a true driver, Zakki trotted beside,
cheering the dogs, and now and again pulling the
canvas aside to speak to little Zakki. They ran
forty miles on the first day, and camped near a
snowdrift on the shore. The snow at the foot of the
drift was deep and hard. Zakki plunged his great
snow-knife in it, as far as the blade would go, and
judged it good hard snow for cutting blocks for
building. He cut and builded, and within two hours
he had made a tiny bee-hive hut for shelter. He
spread the dogs’ harness on the floor, and over all
he laid the skins; then he carried little Zakki in,
away from the keen night wind, and wrapped him
snug and warm. Then he built a fire of brushwood
in a niche of the rock and boiled the kettle. And
as he sat in the tiny snow house and munched his
simple meal, while his son, a very wan and listless
little Zakki, sipped the warm sweet tea, he chattered
on about the splendid run they had made. Forty
miles! And the dogs in harness for the first time
since the spring! It was fine! The ice was safe

ZAKKI—THE JOURNEY 57

and smooth ; there was no snow to clog the runners.
To-morrow, perhaps, they would run fifty miles !

The night fell clear and keen; but before dawn
a powdery snow began to fall, and the going was
slower than ‘on the first day. Zakki toiled and
trudged, and at nightfall they reached the foot of
the mountain pass, with another forty miles accom-
plished. The poor man was up most of that night,
pushing his hand through the ventilation hole at
the top of the snow house to try the wind, or peer-
ing through it in a vain search for the stars. When
daylight came it was snowing fast ; but Zakki knew
the way, and decided to push on, for the child
would be quite safe in his canvas tent. The wind
was blowing against them as they faced the mountain
pass; but they crossed the summit in a blinding,
freezing snowstorm, and camped on the ice below.

On the evening of the fourth day the dogs raced
across the last bay towards the twinkling lights of
our village. Zakki was tired, but he was smiling.
His weary waiting was over; he had crossed the
trackless bays and the mountain solitudes of his
long trail alone, travelling through the storm, be-
cause he simply would not be delayed, helping the
dogs to haul their load uphill, and dragging on it as
they rushed down, guiding and heartening them,
with his own heart nearly breaking, buoyed up
through it all with a great hope—he was taking little
Zakki to the doctor.

I think the doctor never had a harder task than
the one he found that night—the task of breaking

58 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

the truth to Zakki. The child was in the last stage
of consumption ; it was a miracle that he had sur-
vived the journey. And as the doctor raised his
troubled face to look at Zakki, he met the hope of
a father’s soul gleaming from a father’s smiling eyes.
And Zakki asked : ‘‘ How long will it be before he
is better and I can take him home again ?”’

* * * * *

The father’s smile did not change, but his eyes
were full of tears. He simply said, ‘‘ It is the Lord’s
will ; let Him do as seemeth Him good’’ ; but he
said it with the earnestness of a simple soul that
trusts and knows.

It seemed as though he lavished the pent-up love
of a lifetime on the child during those last few days.
The boy liked best to lie in his father’s arms ; and
hour after hour Zakki would hold him, and though
his arms were often cramped and his eyes heavy
from lack of sleep, he smiled—just smiled because
he loved. He brought all kinds of Eskimo dainties
to tempt the poor flickering appetite ; he told scraps
of news from the village ; he read words of comfort
from God’s Book. ‘‘ Shall I read ?’’ he would say.
““Yes, read,’’ said little Zakki; and the father
would open the Book and read about the wonderful
city, where ‘‘God shall wipe away all tears from
their eyes; and there shall be no more death,
neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall there be
any more pain; for the former things are passed
away.”

And as little Zakki slept, God took him, the little

Sa 0 0-H E FOunRN EY 59

Eskimo boy, to that great city of His, where shall
be gathered the redeemed of every nation.

And Zakki, calm with the peace of God which
passes understanding, alone yet not alone, called
his dogs together and turned his face towards his
solitary home.

CHAPTER Ix
THE STORY OF AN OIL-STAINED BIBLE

IT may seem a strange thing to say, but it is true,
that the bleak and bare coast of Labrador has spots
of unsurpassed beauty. Labrador is a desolate land ;
it boasts but little green; its sombre rocks are
brightened only by the tawny moss and lichen and
the silver threads of numberless water-courses ; and
yet its gaunt rocks, its lofty cliffs, its magnificent
ranges of jagged peaks, have a grandeur and a
beauty all their own. Perhaps the most unforget-
table sight that I have ever seen is the light of the
sunrise on the dented summit of the Kiglapeit range ;
the silence of the early morning and the loneliness of
the wide and frozen sea make the vision of that saw-
tooth row of peaks, brightly pink against the dark
blue sky, capped and patched with snow, and seared
with lines of black where the rock is too steep for
the snow to cling, a picture of bleak nature that only
the strange land of Labrador can show.

But I have in mind a summer scene: the mighty
head of Cape Mugford, with the shining snowy tops
of the Kaumajat range stretching twenty miles
towards the west—a scene in which mere rocks and
water and sea and sunshine combine to make a
picture of outstanding beauty and grandeur.

My Eskimo neighbours were less concerned with

60

STORY OF AN OIL-STAINED BIBLE 61

the beauty of the scenery than with the fact that
Mugford is a famous place for codfish and seals ; and
the seals and the fish are the reason why some of
the families used to leave the village in the early
summer and spend the fishing season on the Mug-
ford shore. My little motor-boat puffed lustily
beside the rocky wall; in a tiny bay on the shore
I could see the home of the campers. Children and
dogs were romping on the beach ; on the rocks that
shelved steeply to the water lay the family’s wash-
ing, drying in the sunshine ; and as we slid gently to
our anchorage we could see a woman lighting a fire
outside the house and setting a kettle of water to
boil.

Old Friedrik came down to the beach to meet us ;
a fine type of the Northern Eskimo, sturdy and
squat, with a great mane of shaggy grey hair and
a pair of keen brown eyes. He chatted of his fishing
and of the seals he had seen, and it was plain to me
that his hand had not yet begun to fail nor his endur-
ance to slacken. We sat upon the rocks, drinking
the warm sweet tea that the Eskimos love, and
munching bread and meat. The old man was at
my elbow, voicing fervent ‘‘nakoméks’’ (thanks)
between the mouthfuls. When all had eaten, and
each with a mutter of thanks had set his cup aside,
I said to old Friedrik : ‘‘ If you will bring me a Bible
I will read to you all.’’ ‘‘Illale’’ (By all means),
said he, and rose to fetch his Bible. He shouted a
command that brought the people thronging closer,
then he stooped and passed through the porch into
the house, and soon came back carrying a book. It

62 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

was his New Testament. He passed it to me, and
as I took it into my hands I thought to myself :
‘““ Never have I seen a more ragged, tattered, bat-
teréd, oil-stained copy of the Holy Scriptures than
this.’’ Its covers were blackened and its pages
yellow ; but as I held that battered book a picture
came into my mind—a picture that showed me that
those stains and sears are honourable scars, and that
the pages so frayed and sodden with oil have become
so with much using.

And so, as I took that trusted Book in my hand,
I pictured old Friedrik at his daily work.

The daily work of an Eskimo is a hard battle with
Nature for the daily food. In the summer, when the
ice that has covered the sea for seven months has
broken and gone, when the trout are down to the
sea from their winter home in the fresh-water ponds,
and the codfish are thronging the deep channels
among the islands, the Eskimo goes a-fishing. He
rises with the sun, or sooner ; as the grey light of
the breaking day is showing in the sky and the rocks
stand black and bare, he wends his way to the beach
where his boat lies. With dogged strength he shoves
the little craft into the water ; he clambers nimbly in
and takes the oars, and while the sun is tinting the
hill-tops he is rowing towards his chosen fishing-
place.

Hour after hour he jerks his jigger up and down.
On what he calls a good day he pulls the fish up
in goodly numbers; on bad days he may jig for
hours without a catch. He seldom fails to pull at

STORY OF AN OFL-=STAINED BIBLE 63

least one or two fish into his boat—his tireless
perseverance almost insures him some reward—but
it is a test of his quality of patience that he will toil
on hour after hour though his catch be small,
moving his little boat from place to place in search
of a shoal of fish. There come stormy times when
he is forced to make a dash for shelter, and then
he plies his oars with real Eskimo skill. Storms are
part of his life ; he knows Nature at her sternest and
when her mood seems most pitiless, and he faces
whatever the day may bring with unfailing good
humour.

When the autumn days come, and the codfish
are moving away to the deeper water, he spends his
days on the watch for seals. He takes his skin canoe
down from its scaffolding of poles or from its place
on the roof of the porch, and carries it to the water.
Seated on a piece of dog-skin in the well of the
canoe, with the weight of his body below the water-
line, he paddles away to the hunting place, and
there he stops. Hour after hour he sits like a man
of stone, braving the chill of the air, and careless
of the water all around him on the point of freezing,
warm with the inner warmth of the true Eskimo con-
stitution, waiting with gun in hand or harpoon half
poised, waiting for the wary seals. He likes a skin
canoe, if he can get one, because it is so much more
manageable than a boat in a rough sea. It is
buoyant and light, easy to turn this way and that,
riding the waves like a cork, but stable because the
hunter sits low. But nowadays these “‘kajaks’’ are
not easy to get—for the one reason that it takes

64 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

many seal-skins to make a kajak, and seals are
scarce. The hunter who has not a kajak must, per-
force, make use of a boat ; but a boat is heavy, it
is soon crusted with ice on those bitter November
days, and it is more than one man’s strength can
do to haul any but the lightest boat up the beach
above the water-line after the day’s hunting is done.
There is often danger on these autumn days ; there
are many hardships in the hunter’s life, but the
Eskimo meets danger and hardship alike with his
characteristic smile.

I met one of the cleverest of the men of our
village coming home from the hunt early in the day.
It was a fine day, and he had no seals, so I
wondered what the reason could be. He explained
very simply, and with the deliberate speech that is
so attractive. “‘ The bay is frozen far out,’’ he said,
“‘and the ice is thick. I left my kajak on the ice
yesterday, near the edge, because I would hunt
again to-day. And the storm and the wind that
came in the night have broken the ice, and my
kajak is gone.”’

Yes, some of the men know what it is to wait
for seals at the edge of the ice, and to turn home-
wards and find that the ice has cracked away from
the shore and is bearing them out to sea. Then the
light and handy kajak saves them—unless they are
separated from the piece of ice on which their kajak
lies, and it may be theirs to face the grim likelihood
of drifting away to the ocean, as has been the fate
of some.

So it is that the Eskimo plies his dangerous

STORY OF AN OIL-STAINED BIBLE 65

calling ; so it is that by sheer skill and mastery of the
elements he wrests his food from the sea.

And so I pictured old Friedrik at his hunting.

I pictured the old man turning homewards, tired
with the day’s toil in boat or kajak. He drags the
day’s catch up the rocks to his home. It may be a
bundle of codfish: he flings them on the floor. It
may be a seal: and the children’s eyes glisten as
they watch the sleek carcass flop over the doorstep
into the room ; their mouths water as they think of
the juicy meat and blubber they will so soon be tast-
ing. Friedrik throws his workaday smock into a corner
and sits down ; the others quickly group themselves
on the floor around what he has brought—old folks
and young folks, squatting on their heels, and each
ready with a knife. The baby peers over its
mother’s shoulder, and kicks its chubby legs in the
depths of her hood, crowing and stretching its arms
for a morsel. With good appetite and enjoyment
the people take their food, cutting the raw, red meat
from the half-warm carcass, or pulling strips of raw
fish from the heads of the cod. It is a true Eskimo
supper-table, and the food is the food which the
people love. No delicacy, served with all the art of
a city chef, could compete, in Eskimo opinion, with
the raw flesh of a plump young seal, and no sauce
could better the flavour of a raw fish-head fresh
from the sea.

As the meal proceeds, the old man is telling of his
day's adventures ; he describes the sheltered spot
where he found the codfish ; he shows, with graphic

5

66 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

gestures and wavings of his knife, how the seal rose
and plunged again, moving from place to place until
it came within range of his gun. He talks of his
plans for the morrow, how he will try that fishing
place again, or how he will go round that rock
where he saw a group of seals at play ; and as he
talks first one and then another utters a sigh of
‘“‘Nakomék ’’ (thanks), and wipes his knife, finish-
ing the meal with a draught of water, lukewarm
from the kettle, or a mug of weak sweet tea.
When all have finished, old Friedrik rises and
goes to the table ; he takes the New Testament and
sits down again. He finds his spectacles between
the pages, where he left them last night, and settles
them upon his nose, for, though his eyes are still
keen for the hunting, old age needs some help to
read. Carefully he thumbs the pages, and, point-
ing with his finger, he reads with a slow, impressive
utterance. The other members of the household—
his own wife, motherly and plump, his well-built
son, on whose shoulders the brunt of the hunting
is beginning to fall, the fine buxom daughter-in-law,
nursing a fat and sleepy baby, the several happy-
faced and bright-eyed children sitting so demurely
—listen eagerly and reverently to the well-loved
Word of God. It is their favourite book, and they
never tire of the sound of its words; they seem,
indeed, to be drinking in the message; it 1s very
real, very precious to them. I seem to see them as
they sit, and as I watch them there comes to me the
real meaning of that oil-stained, battered Bible. It
is no irreverent using, but the old man’s daily read-

STORY OF AN OIL-STAINED BIBLE 67

ing that has left its marks upon the book. Evening

by evening he reads ; evening by evening he takes
that well-worn book and cons its pages, learning
more and more of the great love of God, and teach-
ing his little household, not alone by the reading of
the Word, but by the unthought example of his own
true life, that Christ the Lord is indeed a Saviour
unto all mankind.

CHAPTER Tx
MY OLD BOAT

THE village was in the grip of a real August day—
a damp, dreary, drizzling August day, bleak and
raw ; just the sort of August day we often see in
Labrador.

I stood at my window, and looked out upon the
sullen sky and the dull grey sea. It was a cheerless
picture: a soaking mist hung over the water, and
the bare black rocks on the shore looked cold and
dismal ; they would look less cold even in the frozen
winter-time, when their blackness would at least be
relieved by the sparkle of snow and the glint of a
crusting of ice. A depressing picture; but as I
looked a touch of life came into the scene.

A little knot of men walked across the beach to
where my old boat lay upon the shingle. They were
clad in the usual hooded smock of calico that the
Eskimos wear, and I knew them for some of my
Eskimo neighbours. They cared nothing for the
weather ; they were used to it. Some of them were
soaked with the wet, as if they had been out all day ;
others seemed to have come but lately out of doors,
for their smocks were pulled over their shoulders and
arms like sacks, and the sleeves hung loosely at their
sides.

The sight of that group of men set me a-thinking.
They were neighbours of mine. Their homes were
close by—mere huts of rough-sawn boards, built up

68

99 ‘d Suey

ea AIAN RUG) A

MY OLD BOAT 69

on stones away from the damp ground, and piled
round with sods of earth to keep the wind out.
They were rough Eskimo hunters and fishermen,
used to raw food and rough weather, but I knew
them as friends. Yes, in the solitudes of the snow-
covered mountains, in the desolation of the wide sea
ice, on sledges by winter and in boats by summer,
in the homes of the people, in tents and huts and
houses built of snow, I have known the kindness of
the Eskimo. And it was with a strange feeling of
happiness that I watched the little group cross the
foreshore and gather round the ruins of my boat.
They were talking, for I could see them point and
nod their heads ; and I smiled to myself as I thought
how Eskimos would interest themselves in trifling
things on days when the weather forbids them to
hunt. For half an hour or more they argued over
my old boat, and then they made their way gravely
back to their homes. All but one. One old man
stayed to take a further look. He tapped the timbers
with his fist ; he stooped and peered ; he stepped
_ back a pace and studied ; he walked around the boat
and stooped to peer again, and then came trudging
up the beach. As he came nearer I knew him for
old Kornelius, who lived with his wife in a little
hut up the hill. I thought that he was making his
way home ; but no, he left the path and crossed the
bridge towards the hospital. I heard his slow foot-
steps climbing to the porch ; the door creaked, and
in he came. No need for him to knock and wait ;
that is not the way in Labrador. The old man
followed the hospitable Eskimo custom ; he gently

70 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

turned the latch and pushed open the door, and his
wrinkled face came peering into the room.

‘‘ Aksunai’’ (Be strong), he said, in his deep bass
voice.

** Aksunai,’’ said I.

** Ah,’’ said old Kornelius, ‘‘ah, but I have
weighty words to say.’’

‘‘ Sit down,’’ said I, ‘‘and you shall speak ;”’
and the old man sat on the little bench by the door.

‘““ Weighty words,’’ he said, “‘ weighty words.
But if it is impossible, kujanna (never mind)—if my
words do not please you I will not be annoyed—but,
if it is not impossible—may I have your old boat ?”’

And then old Kornelius told his story, sitting at
first on the little green bench, but soon standing
before me and looking in my face—a story of a
summer day, and of the life that the Eskimos live in
the summer-time.

‘“‘T had a boat,’’ he said, ‘‘a good boat, but it
was lost. Many times did I go to the fishing in my
boat, for it was a good boat and small, such as I
could row with ease, and it was enough for the two
of us, myself and Maria my wife; and we fished
together many days. But it was three days ago,
when the big storm blew. I knew that it would blow,
for my bones ached that morning ; but the morning
was calm and the sea was still, and J knew that
there would be many codfish on such a day. So I
said to my wife, ‘ Maria, let us fish,’ and Maria
said, ‘ Ahaila’ (Yes); and we took the two lines
with their jiggers (weighted hooks), and we un-

MY OLD BOAT 71

fastened the rope that binds our boat to the jetty
by the store-house, and I rowed out past Sungolik
to the bank where the codfish feed, the place which
I know, and where I have seen the codfish gathered
thickly together, deep down through the clear water.
And while I rowed, old Maria, that wife of mine,
was scraping the jiggers to make them bright, so
that the codfish might see them easily ; and there,
by Sungolik, we fished. And the fish were much to
be thankful for, for they were many ; and we caught
them faster than we could pull them into the boat.
Often they rushed to meet the bright hook before it
could reach the bottom of the sea, and we were very
happy to get so many fish. We were thinking of
how we would salt them and dry them to sell, and
how we would buy nev blankets and attigeks
(smocks) and many other things ; and Maria would
dry some without salt, on the poles outside our
door, and make pipse, which tastes so good. And so
we fished ; but we did not see that the tide was
angry and the wind was wild. And suddenly it was
a storm, and we were only two old people in a little
boat.’’

Kornelius paused ; he seemed to be picturing the
scene again in his mind, and the pathos of the old
man’s simple tale brought a picture to my mind too.
I seemed to see that little boat tossing on the angry
water, with a brave old man tugging at the oars and
a brave old woman baling.

The Eskimo is a wonderfully strong oarsman ; he
can row on for hours without resting ; he does not

72 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

easily tire, for the rowing of a boat is one of his
ordinary duties from his earliest years ; he knows,
too, how to make a boat travel fast through the
water, whether there be choppy sea or rising wind,
by dint of the short, sharp strokes of the oars which
he favours. And in his day Kornelius had been one
of the strongest men in Okak village. And now in
his old age, though his arm was feeble, his heart
was stout ; he had all the grit and simple persever-
ance of the Eskimo hunter. So Kornelius toiled on,
steadily and calmly, while Maria plied her wooden
dipper in a vain struggle to keep pace with the water
that was all the time splashing into the boat.

It was a hard fight ; the sea seemed too strong
for the old people, but they toiled on. Many times
they must have been overwhelmed as the waves
broke over them, but still they toiled, and at last,
with a boat half full of water, in which the fish and
the fishing lines slid to and fro in a tangle, the old
couple won. The keel grated on the shelving rock,
then banged and pounded as the waves lifted it and
let it fall; and the two old people clambered out
and stood in the swirling water clinging to their boat.
With every incoming wave they tried afresh to drag
it up the slope, but the suck of the retreating water
bore them down again. The sea was stronger than
they, but still they clung and tussled. They clung
until their hands were numb, but at last they could
cling no longer; the bounding, twisting water
wrenched the boat from their feeble grasp, and all
that they could do was to save themselves and vainly
watch their precious boat, the thing they needed

My OLD? BOAT vie}

most, swept out to sea in the grip of the gale. They
watched it out of sight, then, soaked to the skin
but heeding not, they turned to walk along the rocks
to their home.

And old Kornelius was telling me the story.
‘Our boat is lost,’’ he said; ‘‘ we cannot fish”’ ;
and again he turned his pleading eyes upon me.
‘Tf it is impossible,’’ he said, ‘‘ we will not mind,
but—if it is not impossible—may I have your old
boat ?”’

My old boat! What a simple request, but how
important to old Kornelius ! He had said truly when
he told me that he had weighty words to say, for
though that battered old punt meant little to me, it
meant much to old Kornelius. My old boat! There
she lay upon the beach, judged unfit for further
mending. I had thought her work was done, and
had planned her, in my mind, to be chopped into
kindling wood for our fires on the cold winter morn-
ings. But it would seem that her days were not yet
done ; she was to see a further term of service be-
fore ending her days as firewood. ‘‘ May you have
my old boat? Yes, old friend, if you think you can
patch her up and make her seaworthy, and if you
deem her worth the trouble you will spend upon
hee!

Kornelius overflowed with thanks. ‘‘ Nakomék,’’
he said—‘‘ nakomék’’ (how thankful) ; and it was
with a brighter face and a brisker step that he left
my room that morning to climb the hill to his own
little hut and break the good news to Maria.

74 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

And so it came about that day by day as I sat at
work I could hear the old man with his hammer tap-
tap-tapping, patching up my old boat. He came to
beg discarded packing-cases. He knocked them to
pieces with his hammer and carefully saved up every
nail. He came back to borrow my saw, and when
I strolled down the beach to watch him at work I
found him filling the worst holes with wooden
patches. Then Maria began to hover about the
kitchen door on the look-out for empty meat cans.
These the old man flattened out to make tin patches
for gaping seams and bulging joints. Altogether my
old boat provided scope for some wonderful work,
and old Kornelius and his daily doings became a
centre of attraction for the village. Passers-by
turned from the pathway to give a look, and many
a man paused on his way home from the fishing to
offer a word of advice. And, to give Kornelius his
due, I must say that the old man did his work well.
He set about it with true Eskimo thoroughness, and
stuck to it with untirmg perseverance. He was never
idle—and he was never alone. From morning till
night his faithful old Maria hobbled about, holding
nails, fetching tools, steadying a board for the saw,
and doubtless criticising in a wifely sort of way.
The patches multiplied amazingly ; the old boat
began to look quite staunch again.

At last there came a day when Kornelius, for all
his searching, could find no other place to patch,
and then he spent a morning in coating the piebald
hulk with tar. That was a great day for Maria. She
beamed with pride as she turned to her share of the

MY OLD BOAT 15

tar boiling. She built a fireplace of stones beside the
boat, she lit the fire of twigs and set the tar-pot on
it, and scrambled up the hill to gather fuel, and
scrambled down again with brushwood packed in
the hood of her smock and broken branches clasped
in her arms; she stirred the tar with a barrel-stave ;
she even helped to smear it on the seams.

The smoke of the fire came drifting past my
window ; the smell of tar was everywhere, both in
the house and out. The whole village seemed to
be collecting on the beach, and I joined the crowd
that had gathered and watched the old people
plastering. Kornelius had a tar-brush, borrowed
from the storekeeper ; Maria plied a barrel-stave ;
and we all stood gravely watching. Within an hour
the patchwork boat was shining all over with its new
black coat, and the proud owners were at the brook,
with soap and sand and oil, scraping some of the
stains from their hands and clothes.

Later in the day, when the tide was rising, a knot
of men and boys, with shouts of ‘‘ Atte, aksuse’’
(Be strong, all together), dragged the old boat
down the beach to the water ; and in the morning |
watched old Kornelius and his devoted Maria
making ready for another raid upon the codfish on
the banks by Sungolik.

And so my old boat went back to the fishing.

CHAPTER. XI
AN ESKIMO BROTHER

IF you were to go into an Eskimo hut in the summer
time you would see strips or slabs of black, leathery-
looking dried meat lying in a corner or hanging from
the roof.

I am bound to introduce the dried meat to your
notice because this little story bears upon the sub-
ject ; indeed, I might have called my chapter “‘ A
Piece of Dried Meat’’ if I had not thought such
a title would suggest dry reading.

Nevertheless, the dried meat—nipko, the Eskimos
call it—is the important thing in the story, and so,
by way of a beginning, I must say something about
the making of it.

When an Eskimo kills a seal or a deer, he sets
to work, all unwittingly, to give a fine illustration of
the proverb ‘‘ Waste not, want not.’’ The meat, of
course, is the nicest thing he knows for breakfast
and dinner and supper ; the skin becomes clothing
or boots or bedding ; the sinews make thread for
sewing ; the bowel can be split and stitched for
window-panes ; even the bones have their use, for
a shoulder-bone makes a handy scraper for skins ;
and, after all this, whatever is left can be used as
food for the dogs. So, you see, a seal or a deer is
a very fine thing to have, and an Eskimo feels well
repaid for his long, cold wait at the edge of the ice,
or his toilsome trail up the valleys of the mainland, if

76

AN ESKIMO BROTHER 14

he has a load of meat on his sledge at the end of
the day.

He is a happy man as he comes across the frozen
bay to his home, and many are the willing hands
that help his sledge up the slope to the door. There
is a meal of fresh meat for all the neighbours. Likely
enough there is a fine joint set aside as a present for
the missionary, and the hunter remembers the sick
girl on the sea-front or the lame man in the hut on
the hillside, and sends off a toothsome knuckle-bone
by the hand of a small boy. Outside the hut the dogs
will be busy demolishing their share, and last, but
far from least, parts of the best of the meat are set
apart for drying. This—the making of nipko—is
woman’s work, and the housewife has a busy time
on the morning after the hunt. She cuts the meat
into strips and slabs of the right thickness and hangs
them out of doors. The dogs watch with greedy
eyes ; they whine and slink, but the housewife out-
wits them. She hangs the meat on poles, out of
climbing reach, and there, on the end of an oar or
a tent-pole, it dangles in the wind—a sight to make
a dog’s teeth water. There it hangs, exposed to all
weathers, blown about by the wind, scorched by the
sun, washed by the rain, but all the time drying
slowly in the clear sharp air. It shrivels and
blackens, and looks anything but appetising to the
unaccustomed, and, sooner or later, when she thinks
it black enough and hard enough and dry enough,
the good wife takes it down and pronounces it ‘‘ good
nipko,’’ and forthwith it takes its place upon the
dinner-table.

78 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

Such is nipko, the real Eskimo dainty, dried with-
out salt. It needs no cooking, and I know that it is
a very sustaining food. And such is the nipko that
figures in our story. It lies in a corner or hangs from
the rafters, and there you might see it if you went
into a hut. I cannot tell you the taste of it ; I only
know that it is nearly as tough and hard as boot
leather. I tried to eat some once; I cut a piece for
myself, and chawed and gnawed, but the nipko got
the better of me. It was still hard and tough when
my teeth were sore, and I had not yet discovered
the taste of it. The Eskimos laughed at me, and
well they might, for their teeth are made for chew-
ing tough things. ‘‘ Splendid nipko, this,’’ they
said, and bit new pieces for themselves.

Now, for the purpose of our story, I have intro-
duced you to the dried meat, let us turn to the
people concerned. They are the old Eskimo couple,
Kornelius and Maria, whom you met in the last
chapter.

The manner of their wedding was rather comical.
This is the way it came about. Kornelius was a
widower ; he was an old man, living alone in a tiny
hut ; he wanted a wife for company and to see to
all those little duties that fall within the province of
an Eskimo wife—drying the meat, sewing the boots,
cleaning the house, mending the clothes—in fact, the
old man wanted a wife to look after him.

There were quite a number of widows in our
village at the time, and Kornelius proposed to them
all in turn.

They all said no.

AN ESKIMO BROTHER 79

No, they thought, he is an old man; he cannot
hunt or earn much of a living ; we are better off as
we are.

Finally, Kornelius bethought himself of old Maria.
She was in some ways a queer old soul, and lame as
well, but she would be company in the house, so he
would ask Maria.

On the day of the proposal Maria was working
in the hospital wood-room—she used to help in the
piling of the winter’s stock of firewood. She could
not do much, but she felt that she was earning some-
thing, and that was a satisfaction to her. The first
news | had of the coming wedding was from Maria
herself. She burst into my room with face aglow :

_ “*Doctor,’’ she said, ‘‘ the old man has fallen in
love with me.’’

Do you want a sequel? Well, the marriage turned
out quite a happy one. Maria was a cripple, but she
was up to all the tricks of Eskimo cookery—if dry-
ing the meat comes under that heading—and so she
used to make nipko for herself and her husband.
He, poor old man, was too feeble to go to the hunt-
ing any more; his eyes were growing dim and his
arm had lost its cunning. In a way he was enjoying
a hunter’s leisure, for he was relying on a sort of
co-operative system that is very popular among the
Eskimos.

Kornelius had a net, but he was too old to use it,
so he lent his net to one of the younger men, and
the two of them shared the seals which the net
caught. The young man took the half as payment
for his trouble and handed the rest over as hire for

80 AN ESKIMO! VILLAGE

the net. Sometimes you may find a man tending
another’s net without payment, doing it just as an
act of brotherly kindness. There was a crippled man
in the village who made quite a good living at the
trout-fishing. He, poor fellow, was bedridden, but
his friends looked after the nets for him and set the
fish apart as his catch. It is one of the ways in
which the Eskimo shows the charitable spirit that
is in him.

And now, in order to make the real acquaintance
of old Kornelius, you must come into his house.
It is only a little hut, a real Eskimo iglo, built of
wood and turf, and you must stoop very low in order
to get through the porch and doorway. There are
often a couple of dogs sunning themselves outside,
or sheltering from the wind under the shadow of the
porch ; they are the relics of Kornelius’s team, and
are useful for lending to neighbours. Indeed, this
is the way in which the old man keeps up a supply
of firewood for his stove, for the borrower is always
willing to pay for the use of the dogs by giving a
couple of logs from the load that they have helped
to haul from the woods.

This explains the dogs in the porchway.

Once inside the hut your eyes must get used to
the gloom, for the window over the door is not of
glass, but of a membrane made by stitching seal’s
bowel together in strips. Such a window has its
uses: it allows a certain amount of fresh air to pass
in as it flaps to and fro in the wind; it also lets a
little light into the hut, though you cannot see
through it, and the sunshine only filters in very

AN ESKIMO BROTHER 81

dimly. Kornelius is most likely sitting on a box
against the wall puffing at his pipe, while Maria
crouches over the stove, stirring a pot of simmering
seal-meat. The air of the house is steamy and heavy
and warm, and a tremendously fishy smell is coming
from the cookery. In one corner is a big home-
made bedstead of rough boards, spread with deer-
skins and a patchwork counterpane, in another
stands a tiny table, strewn with cups and spoons and
knives and fishing tackle. A few cheap ornaments
rear their heads among the litter, and a loudly tick-
ing clock stands boldly in the midst. There are
several well-thumbed books. If you pick them up
you will see that they are different parts of the
Eskimo Bible, for the long Eskimo words make the
Bible a bulky book. Maria and her cooking-stove
fill a third corner, and, sure enough, in the fourth
corner there is a heap of nets—nets torn at the
sealing, no doubt, and waiting for the old man’s
fingers to mend them—and above the nets hang the
black slabs of dried meat. That is the dried meat
that figures in this little story. So, having made
the proper acquaintance of Kornelius and Maria
and their little home, and of the nipko, let us plunge
into the real tale.

It is not a very long time now since old Kornelius
died. He was slowly getting feebler, and at last
there came a day when his strength failed him, and
he had to take to his bed. He knew that he was on
his death-bed ; his Eskimo instinct told him so, and
Eskimo instinct is rarely at fault.

But old Kornelius was not troubled ; he was at

6

82 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

peace with his fellow-men ; he had made provision
for his wife ; he was at peace with his Maker ; in
fact, he was just waiting, as he himself told me,
waiting to be called home to his Father’s House.
Day by day he grew more feeble. He lay on his
bed almost helpless, and as he lay, he could all the
time see the nipko. And there came an inspiration
to old Kornelius. ‘‘ Maria,’’ he said, in his deliberate
Eskimo way, ‘‘ Maria’’—and the old woman turned
from her work and hobbled to the bedside—
‘‘ Maria,’’ said old Kornelius, “‘ sit by my side, for
I have many words to say to you. When I am gone
you are to go and live in Josef’s house. He is a
clever hunter, and you will always have plenty to
eat. Josef has promised to give you a home, and
you can help his wife with the work; you will be
happy and comfortable there. I am looking at the
nipko over there in the corner. We do not need it.
I shall not be here very long now, and my teeth are
too weak to bite it. It is very good nipko, and you
have dried it well. Let us give it to somebody who
needs it. There is that poor boy who broke his leg ;
he would be glad to have it ; it would make his bones
strong again. And I should like to give it to
him, because his name is Kornelius, too. Take
it to him, and say that it is a present from his name-
sake. |

Maria obediently filled her hood with the dried
meat and carried her bulging bundle to the hospital
on the sea front, where young Kornelius lay.

‘‘ This,’ she said, “is a present irom eld
Kornelius, your namesake.’’

AN ESKIMO BROTHER 83

How that boy’s eyes glistened! Here was a
surprise. Here was a real treat! What is there
more tasty than nipko, especially to an Eskimo boy !

‘‘Nakomék, nakomék’’ (How thankful, how
thankful), said young Kornelius. And day by day
he lived on that splendid Eskimo food, gaining
strength fast, for maybe the Lord, who blessed the
loaves and fishes long ago, had blessed the old
man’s kindly gift.

I have watched young Kornelius at his meals, and
I wish you could have seen him, too. He handled
the black and leathery stuff with a loving hand ; he
turned it over and over, and pointed out the most
tempting parts to the nurse. He besought her to
bring him a cup of cod-liver oil. ‘‘ Fresh oil,’’ he
said, ‘‘new from the codfish—not oil from the
bottle. No, let it be thick, and with a proper
flavour.”’

His way of eating was truly Eskimo. He would
cut strips from his queer-looking nipko with a well-
worn pocket-knife and chew them with immense
satisfaction. He poked the end of a strip between
his teeth, gripped it tightly, and sawed it off at the
proper place with his precious knife. He held the
knife edge uppermost and sawed from below up-
wards, and many a time as I watched him I feared
for his nose, but Korni was doing a real Eskimo
trick, and his nose was safe. Sometimes, between
the bites, he would dip the strips in his cup of cod-
liver oil : that made them taste especially good, that
gave the meat a proper flavour. It pleased young
Korni’s palate ; his face wrinkled with pleasure. His

84 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

hollow cheeks began to fill out, his spirits rose as his
health came back, he sang as he lay alone.

Yes, old Kornelius, I believe that your gift was
reckoned to you as given to the Master Himself. He
was hungry, and you gave Him meat, for inasmuch

as you did it to one of the least, you did it to the
Lord. '

CHAPTER XII
YOUNG KORNELIUS

IT seems fitting, after the story of the nipko or dried
meat in our last chapter, to make further acquaint-
ance with the boy, young Kornelius, whom we saw
eating that same meat.

As for myself, my real knowledge of the Eskimo
boy began when I met Kornelius. Before that
interesting time I had seen something of the boys
of our village : I had watched them at their wild and
dangerous games on the water and in the snow and
among the breaking ice ; I had spent hours among
them at the hunting places and the fishing camps,
and had seen them learning to be men and hunters
like their fathers ; I had heard their odd remarks as
they sat looking at picture books in my room ; I had
sat facing them in church, and had heard their gruff
young voices sing, but I did not know the Eskimo
boy until I learnt to know young Korni.

Kornelius was an Eskimo boy, a particularly
bright sample of his kind, twelve years old, and as
full of mischief and fun as it is possible for a boy
to be. If you, my reader, had enjoyed the good
fortune to visit Labrador, I could have told you an
easy way of finding Kornelius.

Look for the ringleader in every boyish game ;
look for the most daring of all: that is Kornelius.

85

86 AN ESKIMO (VILLAGE

In winter the boys have a way of sliding down the
hills and snowdrifts on wooden runners something
like very short skis. Korni was always at the
steepest and roughest places, taking the most appal-
ling turns and leaps at a breakneck speed.

In the spring you might see the boys paddling
about in the sea on broken pieces of ice. Korni’s
piece was usually under water, being too small to
bear his weight in a reasonable way, and as often as
not he would be standing on it, keeping a precarious
balance by prodding at the water with a broken oar.
And as for the summer time, I warrant your heart
would stand still if you could see Kornelius in a boat
—alone in a boat, I mean, for he can be very sub-
dued and quiet when his uncle is about. He delights
to borrow some tiny skiff, with or without the
owner’s permission, and to hoist an amateur mast
and sail. Then he will fare forth on some gusty
afternoon for the sheer joy of beating back against
the wind.

You watch him as a squall strikes him. ‘“‘ He’s
over,’’ you say, and look wildly around for a rescuer.
But no, with a pull or a twist he rights the boat—
the more it heels over the more delighted he is—
and home he comes with beaming face twinkling
with pride as his last long tack sends the boat sweep-
ing alongside the steps at the end of the jetty.

Korni’s life was full of escapades. He had the
knack of turning the most ordinary errands into
adventures. The mere fetching of a bucket of
water would lead him into a splashing contest with
half the children of the village, so that his aunt had

YOUNG KORNELIUS 87

much ado to get the water she wanted for her wash-
tub. And as for walking anywhere, if it were
possible to reach the desired place by sliding or roll-
ing—well Korni would slide or roll or tumble just
for the joy of doing it.

It was one of these adventures that began our
acquaintanceship, and this is the way of it. Korni
was out for a ramble on the hills when he saw a hare.
A moment’s thought would have told him that he
could not possibly catch it, but Korni was not the
boy to stand thinking when there was something to
be chased. After the hare he went, helter-skelter
_ among the rocks, hallo-ing and throwing stones as
he ran.

This was an ordinary, everyday sort of adventure,
but it ended seriously. Korni, in full flight among
the grass and the stones, caught his foot and fell.
He tried to get up, but no—his leg was broken.

So he lay and shouted, and presently a party of
Eskimos heard him and came to see what was the
matter. They fetched a sledge, and took Kornelius
back to his uncle’s hut, and thence to hospital.

At this point his name enters not only into the
hospital case-book, but also into the memories of
all who came in touch with him. Give Kornelius his
due: he was a good boy, with never a scrap of
malice in him, and a fund of good humour that never
failed.

So long as his leg was painful he was as quiet as
a boy can be, looking at picture books most of the
time and writing queer letters to himself and to all
of us. The margins of the picture books bear the

88 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

marks of his writings ; queer ideas, clothed in quaint
words. And not all in Eskimo, though Eskimo was
Korni’s native language. No, so bright a boy was
certainly a favourite on the fishing schooners, and
there he had picked up some English, so English
he would write.

‘“ Korni,’’ he wrote, ‘‘no good; broken leg.’’
‘‘ Nis, very good.’’ ‘‘ Nis’’ being his way of spel-
ling “‘ nurse.’’

And Korni took to art ; the books are decorated
with his pictures. Himself, his friends—especially
Edua and Timmo, two cronies only second to him-
self in mischief—the nurse, the spectacled doctor,
all are there, labelled so that all who see may know
them. True, the faces are of Eskimo type, the type
that comes naturally to Kornelius. Noses are flat ;
too flat for our ideas of beauty, but charming to the
eyes of Korni ; too flat, indeed, to be a resting-place
for spectacles. Cheeks are broad and eyes are small,
but the names are underneath—and what more
could you want?

These books, with their writings and their por-
traits, call back the days when Korni lay in bed and
his leg was painful, but as time passed the pain
grew less, and the subdued and quiet Korni began
to bubble over. The boyish mischief came to the
surface.

Korni, like most boys, had a taste for exploring.
This, added to the fact that he was naturally bright
and quick to learn, gave him the courage to do any-
thing.

The beginnings were mild ; Korni wanted to “‘ see

¢

YOUNG KORNELIUS 89

the works.’’ The clock in the ward refused to go.
Korni offered to mend it. He spent a quiet day in
taking the clock to pieces—his bed was strewn with
wheels and amateur tools. He must needs have his
dinner in the midst of the litter, for no hand must
disturb the arrangement of the fragments. It was
only a cheap clock, but by dint of much fitting and
trying and wrinkling of brows young Korni put it
together again, and for a time it did its duties.

““Not much good,’’ said Korni, jerking a scorn-
ful thumb at the clock, ‘‘ sick insides.’’

Now followed a time of tinkering with any clock
upon which he could lay his hands, and so long as
clock-mending was enough to hold his fancy, he
would sit quiet for hours.

But one day a creaking noise told us that the bed
was on the move. Korni had discovered that it ran
on castors.

This was a new joy—to wheel himself about the
ward when we were not looking. But Korni was
never to be caught in full career. However suddenly
anyone went into the ward the bed was standing
still, maybe over by the window, with a meek and
proper Kornelius sitting in it looking at a picture
book, and no signs of any means of propulsion to be
seen. For this reason I am unable to tell you how
that boy with his helpless leg managed to travel as
he did. I suppose that Korni illustrates the proverb,
‘Where there’s a will there’s a way.’’ And then
his tin whistle ! Somebody gave Korni a tin whistle.
Hour after hour he whiled away the tedium with
shrill melodies. He mostly chose the solemn kind

90 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

of hymn-tunes, played slowly ; and there he used
to lie, blowing, oblivious of all else, absorbed in his
music.

In due time, Korni was well enough to be up on
crutches. I called the village carpenter—a solid and
elderly Eskimo—and after many explainings and
showings of pictures on my part, and noddings and
shakings of the head on his, the old man went home.
He came back the next day with a very respectable
pair of crutches, but Korni would have nothing to do
with them. He eyed such supports with disfavour,
and there had to be a practical demonstration of
crutch-walking before he could be persuaded. But
when once he had tried! It was difficult to get the
boy to bed at all. His continual cry was, ‘‘ May I
get up now?’ ‘‘ May I have my crutches now?”’
‘Need I go to bed yet ?’’—all rendered the more
beseeching by his big, limpid eyes. The crutches
widened Korni’s field ; he could visit all corners of
the ward, and, best of all, he could look out of the
window. He liked to look out of the window; he
could see the boys at play in the village, and they
would look up and catch his eye and wave messages
to him. Sometimes he would beckon for his friend
Timmo to come and visit him, and the two would sit
doing puzzles, or exchanging news, or looking at
pictures.

So long as Korni remained in the ward we felt
that he was safe. But his adventurous soul was
bursting with curiosity, and he started to explore the
corridors.

‘‘ Kornelius,’’ said I, when I found him stumping

YOUNG KORNELIUS gi

round the top passages, ‘‘ you must not go outside
the door of your room, you might fall downstairs
and break your leg again, and that would be
dreadful.’’

Korni gazed at me with his big eyes, and settled
to his picture book again, and presently took to
staring out of the window. But before he had been
left for ten minutes, the crutches would be tap-tap-
tapping along the passages again !

At last I caught Kornelius on the stairs with his
crutches, laboriously climbing downwards. This was
too much.

‘“ Kornelius,’’ I said, ‘‘if I catch you out here
again, I will have to make you stay in bed.’’

This threat produced an expression of horror in
Korni’s face, which gradually changed to a look
in which penitence seemed to combine with half a
dozen other emotions—a look to melt the stoniest
heart.

With a mournful air Korni turned to the window
and tapped for his friend Timmo, and in a few
minutes the two of them were looking at pictures in
the most earnest manner imaginable—a subdued
and exemplary pair of Eskimo boys.

I had hardly left them when there came the tap of
the crutches again !

The time had come for me to be cross with
Kornelius ! I marched upstairs, practising a suit-
able frown, and stringing together in my mind some
suitable Eskimo syllables for the reprimanding of
Korni. To the best of my ability I would make him
a speech. The tap-tapping grew all the more

92 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

vigorous as I came the nearer. Korni would seem to
be in defiant mood. At last, in the top passage, I
met the culprit face to face—and it was not Korne-
lius at all. A smothered sound of laughter told me
that he was safe where I had left him. The boy with
the crutches was Timmo, Korni’s bosom friend and
disciple in mischief. Timmo had been stalking up
and down in obedience to Korni—the chief plotter
in this little play—Korni, the general commanding
the operations from the base. Timmo stood anxiously
waiting. He rather feared that he might get into
trouble over this little prank, but when he saw an
amused look dawning—for who could help laughing ?
—he grinned all over his face, and followed readily
enough, chuckling and expectant, to see what treat-
ment Korni would receive.

We walked into the room. There sat Korni, quietly
turning the pages of his book, and seeming absorbed
in the pictures. But his eyes told their own tale ; he
could not resist a furtive look, to see how his little
hoax had succeeded. He twinkled up at me, and we
all burst into laughter. Their joy was complete—
Korni and Timmo had succeeded in “‘having me
on.”’

Kornelius was soon able to be out of doors, and
his delight was a pleasure to see. But great as it
was, it was no greater than the delight of Timmo
and the others at the return of their leader. Korni
was the moving spirit in all the games ; he was the
genius, ever on the search for some new escapade.
Timmo and Edua and the others had missed him
sadly ; they were strangely quiet while he was away.

YOUNG KORNELIUS 93

They wandered among the rocks, or sat whittling
with their pocket knives, or threw stones into the
sea ; but now that Korni was among them again all
was changed.

Their spirits rose, their shouts grew loud again.
Korni had come back.

CHAPTER XIII
A MEMORY OF SLEDGE-DOGS

I WONDER is there a place in all the world where
you may see more dogs gathered together than in
an Eskimo village! Go where you will among the
huts, you find dogs. They sleep in the porchways
of the huts ; they wander aimlessly about ; they slink
out of your way as you come along the path ; they
snarl at you from a distance. They wrangle in great
multitudes over scraps of food flung from doorways ;
they are everywhere. It is a poor house that has
only two or three dogs; most men seem to like a
team of from seven to fifteen. Why, even old Hen-
rietta has one dog, and you may see that black and
woolly fellow hauling home a bundle of sticks, and
helped manfully by young Benjie the grandson.

So ours is a village of dogs, and you must learn
to walk warily, for, when not on duty with the
sledge, dogs sleep outside the door, all powdered
and frosted with snow, and ready to snap hastily at
the visitor who chances to break their slumbers. As
for the puppies, the air is filled with their shrill whin-
ings as they learn—at the hands of some not-too-
gentle urchin—to drag a toy sledge or a lump of
frozen snow. Doggy families nestle in corners of
huts. You may only know of their presence by the
quiet whimper of hungry little things, and the rustle
of straw as the mother gathers her brood to her.

23

A MEMORY OF SLEDGE-DOGS-— 95

Those are the newly born. In a few days they will
rough it with the others outside. The porch is the
home of the dogs.

I even kept a team myself, because I wanted to
have strong dogs for the sledge journeys. Hand-
some fellows they were, well fed and well cared for ;
but little John liked his own dogs best.

‘““Dogs that work every day,’’ he said, ‘‘are
more used to the pulling and do not tire. Your dogs
only work sometimes, and on other days they are
fed without working. It is not good for dogs.”’

So whenever there came a travelling time little
John brought a few of his own dogs along and
harnessed them with mine. Lean, hungry-looking
things they were, that toiled with noses down, and
set a rare example of pace and staying power to the
others. They were workers, those dogs of little
John’s. They ran all day with traces tight. They
seemed to know John’s voice and did what he bid
them without complaint. They swallowed their food
when the day was done, and curled themselves to
sleep in the snow. They moved away and shivered
if I tried to pet them.

On one of our journeys, John brought a special
dog—a great, gaunt brute with yellow coat, a
strange, uncanny creature that ever and again raised
its head to give a weird half human yell. ‘‘ Mauja,’’
it shrilled, “‘mauja, maujdrluk”’ (soft snow, soft
snow) ; and always came this howl of distress when
the way was toilsome. As I sat upon the sledge the
cry came to me, above the creaking of the runners
and above the panting of the toiling team. The

96 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

snow was soit, and the great yellow dog was giving
voice.

It sank its shoulders in the powdery sea ; it swam
and floundered in the yielding, clinging snow.
‘‘ Mauja,’’ it whined, ‘‘ soft snow, soft snow.’’

Many are the memories of travelling times ; of
nights in snow huts, built on mountain passes or in
some gully near the frozen sea; of comings to vil-
lages in the dark of the evenings, when the people
had settled themselves to sleep, and only came tum-
bling out of their doorways when the howling of their
dogs told them that something new was in the air ;
of turnings aside from our track to see some lonely
household dwelling in the utmost solitude.

It was in the afternoon of a spring day that we
swung round the bend of a frozen channel and came
in sight of a queer little hut.

The dogs pricked up their ears and tugged at
their traces, and, with never a thought of the track
that we were following, they galloped along in a
mad scramble, dragging the heavy travelling sledge
with many a jolt and bump towards the hummocks
that fringed the shore. We had hardly time to turn
aside if we wanted to reach home that night ; but
the dogs had seen the little hut, with its thin wreath
of blue smoke curling upwards, and their minds were
full of doggy visions of food and rest and shelter
from the frost. So little John smiled and shrugged
his shoulders, and the dogs had their way.

‘“We cannot stop them if we would,”’ he said,
‘but we must not linger—only half an hour.’’ And
he jumped from the sledge to guide it through the

A MEMORY OF SLEDGE-DOGS 97

rough pathway among the boulders, and in scarcely
the time it takes to tell we had drawn up beside the
little hut, and the dogs had lain them down to rest.

Well, maybe, the dogs had done right in taking
us away from our track, for it would seem a pity to
pass anyone by in lonely Labrador ; and here on this
lonely beach was the chosen dwelling-place of a
family of hunters. At the sound of the padding of
the dogs and the rumble of the runners on the ice,
the family came out to see, and we found ourselves
shaking hands with some of our own village folk,
and hearing how they were faring at the hunt. But
we must go into the little hut ; no Eskimo welcome
would be complete without that. So in we went,
climbing down the pit-like entrance-way, and shak-
ing hands again and being bidden welcome.

It was a queer little hut. At one time, not many
weeks before, it had been a house of snow, built in
the proper beehive shape ; but the warmth of the
stove inside had melted some of it, and the sun had
softened the outside of it, until the roof was gone
and nothing but the wall was left. So there it stood,
like a mixture of summer and winter, a broken-down
snow house with a sail for a roof. There was no
need to spend much time inside ; indeed, there was
not room for all of us. But why stay in the house
in the daytime, when the sun shines bright and the
wind is not too cold? And, besides, the kettle will
boil just as well out of doors as in.

So out we went again, out from the gloomy little
hut, with its queer canvas roof, to the glorious vision
of frozen sea and snow-covered mountains. The

7

98 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

kettle was already on the boil, so the Eskimo house-
wife dropped in more handfuls of snow, and stuffed
more dry twigs into the fire that blazed in the shelter
of a snow fireplace, while I stood by the travelling
box groping for tea and meat and bread among the
snow that had drifted through the chinks beneath
the cover. Little John touched me gently on the
shoulder.

‘They ask,’’ he said, ‘‘ will you please read ?”’

‘By all means,’’ said I—and I took the New
Testament from its snug place among the clothing
—‘‘by all means. Let them sit down and we will
read while we wait for the kettle.”’

Little John was a man of invention. He tumbled
the box off the sledge and wiped the snow away with
his sealskin glove, and there he had a bench all
ready—my big travelling sledge, sixteen feet and
four inches long.

So they sat themselves down in a row. And I
could not help the quaint thought coming to me as
I watched them. What a tumble there would be if
the dogs were to rise up suddenly and drag the
sledge away ! But the dogs were happy to lie still
and lick the frozen snow from the pads of their fect,
too weary to think of such a thing as rising up and
running. So the listeners sat secure and safe.

We read from the Book, and ever and anon the
housewife rose quietly to mend the fire or to raise
the lid of the steaming kettle ; we sang our hymn
together, and our voices rang in the sharp, clear
air and echoed from the rocky walls behind us ; we
bowed our heads in prayer, and surely God, who

A MEMORY OF SLEDGE-DOGS_ 99

watches over His children everywhere, heard us
there in the frozen wilderness.

And afterwards, as we sat together in friendly talk
and drank our tea, and I heard of the doings of little
Emilia, the cripple—how plump and strong and rosy
she was getting !—once again the quiet hand of
little John fell upon my shoulder ; the half-hour was
past, and we must be on our way again.

We bundled our boxes on the sledge ; we shouted
to the sleepy dogs, and with a cheery wave of the
hand and a cheery call of ‘‘ Aksuse. Be ye strong !
the Lord be with you,’’ we rumbled down the slope
to our track once more.

CHAPTER XIV
A SNOW HOUSE STORY

OUTSIDE my window the boys were building houses
of snow, cutting blocks from the frozen drift, piling
them up in spiral fashion, and shouting and hurrying
in a scramble to be ready first. They built like real
men, one boy inside the circle, armed with a great
snow-knife, cutting shapely slabs of frozen snow,
piling them one against the other spiral-wise, work-
ing from left to right as the Eskimo manner is, the
other boy outside, patting the blocks into place and
stuffing the cracks with powdery snow, taunting the
builder with his slowness and urging him to greater
hurry. The little playtime houses grew ; it was some
competition that the boys were holding, and no
doubt Benjie would crow loudly over Jako and the
others if he could manage to wall himself in the
soonest and cut his way out of the finished beehive,
to jeer at the unfinished labours of his rivals.

I thought of the pictures I had seen—of villages
of tidy snow huts, like so many beehives all ranged
in rows, all white and glistening. But our village is
not like that ; our huts are all of wood ; our snow is
all soiled and trodden with the tramping of many
feet, and even the drifts that rear against the walls
are patched and blackened with the smoke from
many chimney pipes. And here outside my window
were the only snow huts I had seen in all the village,

100

oor ‘d suey

“aSNOH MONS VY

A SNOW HOUSE STORY IO!

and the boys—Benjie and Jako and Rena and the
others—were shouting and laughing as they crawled
in and out.

In the north, where wood cannot be found, there
are villages of snow; but on most of the coast of
Labrador the Eskimos have learnt a liking for houses
more secure and lasting, and so they dwell in homes
of wood and turf—walled round, maybe, with snow
for warmth—and leave the building of real snow
houses for the travelling times, when shelter is
wanted on journeys.

I have many memories of old travelling times,
when we camped on mountain passes or on the
shores of the frozen sea ; but perhaps the most real
memory of all is of the time when a great procession
of sledges, headed by the proud and happy little
John, came to a halt with the waning of daylight
on the summit of the Kiglapeit Pass, and there in
the wilderness we built our houses of snow and laid
us down to rest. Surely of all strange places the
strangest in which to worship God. But here is the
story of it.

All day long we had toiled through the snow and
the driving wind, and only the Labrador traveller
can know the weariness of such a toiling. We had
reached our looked-for camping place; men and
dogs had struggled bravely up the pass in the
gathering gloom, and we were on the summit of the
Kiglapeit. The wind had fallen with the waning
daylight, and happy little John, the best of
drivers, was hoping for a fine day and a quick run
to-morrow. As soon as the sledges had come to a

I02 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

standstill he had bustled away on his usual errand
of ‘‘ finding snow,’’ prodding and searching with his
great snow-knife for the proper sort of snow for
building ; and now the men were busy cutting circles
in the hard drift, and the spiral walls of the houses
were growing in a magical way. Tired and cold, I
turned to my usual task of making tea, and the
reader may imagine me, a padded, fur-clad figure
with frosted face, bending over a fire which crackled
in a hole in the snow, stuffing handfuls of broken ice
into the blackened kettle that swung upon a stick.
So I crouched over the blaze, trying, like the little
match-girl in the story, to imagine myself warm in
the bitter cold, until the kettle spluttered and the tea
was made, and I went stumbling over the snow in
the twilight to see how John was faring with his
building. I found the little man strewing the dog’s
harness on the floor for his bed, mainly, as he told
me, to keep the dogs from eating it in the night.
He had spread my sleeping-bag across the middle
of the house, and so we were ready for the passing
of the night. But close beside us the other men were
finishing a noble house, a great snow hut fully ten
feet across, and high enough for me to stand with-
out stooping. ‘‘ Let us take our tea together in that
great house,’’ said I. ‘‘ Piovok’’ (It is good), said
John, and in we went with our kettle.

The house was full of people, although the snow
was still powdering down from the roof as the men
put the finishing touches to their work. We sat
around the wall, on boxes, on coils of harness, on
bags of dogs’ food, and we passed the steaming

A SNOW HOUSE STORY 103

kettle from hand to hand. The cold air froze our
breath on our lips and noses as we munched our
frozen bread and meat and drank our warm tea, but
the spirit of content and happiness was among us.
‘““ Nakomék, nakomék ”’ (Thanks, thanks), said the
Eskimos, as one by one they laid their cups aside
and settled themselves to listen. This was always a
part of our campings. The New Testament or the
Book of Psalms always found a place in the travel-
ling box, and in our lonely snow houses the drivers
liked to sit and listen to the Word of God. We were
used to a tiny hut to hold the three of us, two
Eskimos and myself, with hardly room to stretch our
legs ; we were used to the quiet of such nights, when
we read our chapter and said our prayer and laid
us down to rest before the toil of another day’s
travelling. But this was something special. Here
was a great snow house, roomy and tall, with a
dozen and more of people in it, joining with quiet
reverence in the evening prayer.

‘‘Sing,’’ said somebody, and in a moment they
were singing, first the old hymns, ‘‘ Jesus, day by
day’ and “‘ Now thank we all our God,’’ then the
favourite translations from Sankey, ‘‘ Saviour like
a shepherd lead us,’’ ‘‘I will guide thee with Mine
eye,’ and many another, all sung to the tunes that
we know so well.

I wish you had been there to hear it. The
Eskimos can always sing, but the memory of the
singing in the snow house on the Kiglapeit is a
wonderful thing to me.

I left them singing and went out into the night.

104. AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

I climbed the slope of the river bank and looked
down into the pass. There in the hollow stood the
snow house, all lined with light where the candle
shone through the crevices in the wall, and the night
air was filled with the music of the singing.

And so I look back on one of the most wonderful
memories of life in Labrador: the snow house on
the mountain pass, with its little gathering of fur-
clad Eskimos singing praise to God in their own
tongue ; and that strange and frozen place, which
knew no other sound but the howling of the wind and
the cry of the hungry wolf, echoing with the name
of Christ the Lord.

CHAPTER XV
THE WONDERFUL COLLECTION

THIs is the tale of the time when the shadow of
famine lay upon our village. It was the winter of
1911 ; the sledges were coming home from the seal-
ing places, home for Christmas, and day by day as
the sledges came we heard the same story, ‘* No
seals.’’ Day by day we saw the trotting dogs come
round the point, dragging the sledges along the
smooth track that crossed our bay ; day by day the
eager people rushed from the village to meet the
newcomers, and always with the question, *‘ Have
you seals ?’’ But always the same answer, always
the same shake of the head, whether the sledges
came from the islands by the ocean’s edge or from
the sheltered channels of the mainland: ‘“‘ No seals
at all—puijekarungnaipok, tava.”’

In spite of toilsome hauling of nets, in spite of
daily watching in skin canoes upon the icy water, the
seal-hunt was a failure. And now the autumn hunt-
ing was over: the sea was frozen. One seal was
caught, and only one; it was found in the net that
belonged to the storekeeper. He, good man, had
been thinking of food for his team of dogs, but he
handed that seal over to the elders of the village,
telling them to share it among the people as a
Christmas dinner for the village, and so the folk got
their one square meal of the food they loved.

105

106 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

Now my story leads me to the bitter weeks of
January, when the storms raged and the snow lay
deep and hard. It was a trying time for the people,
but they were not cast down; with all the good
humour of the real Eskimo they sought their daily
food. They drove their dog-teams to the woods and
fetched back trees, and the frozen beach became a
vast field of sawing and chopping. Piles of planks
and mounds of firewood lay upon the snow, and
while the men sawed and chopped the boys and
women dragged heaped sledges to the store and sold
their wood for food and clothing. But in spite of all
that the store-house and the Mission could provide,
the people lacked their native food. There were no
seals, no skins for boots and clothing, and, worst of
all, no blubber to be eaten on those bitter days.

The men began to feel the cold—men who were
used to sleeping in the snow and driving dogs
through blizzards, and to whom the winter cold of
Labrador had never before brought a shiver—but
still there were brave fellows who went out in the
bleak hours of the dawn to spy for seals at the edge
of the ocean ice. But, alas! the seals had flocked
some other way ; in the wonted channels there were
none. I warrant that the dogs eyed the sea with
hungry looks on those cold mornings ; poor things,
they looked in vain for proper food to keep them
strong. They grew gaunt and pinched, and had
much ado to haul their daily sledges. And some-
times, alas ! one dog must be killed to make a meal
for the rest ! Those were hard times for the village,
and yet, you know, the Eskimo is a cheery soul.

COLLECTION.

WONDERFUL

THE

)F

(

HIS SHARE

BLUBBER:

Facing p. 106

THE WONDERFUL COLLECTION 107

In spite of all their hardships, the people worked on
with indomitable will, and looked forward to better
times.

It came about in the later days of January that
the news of the hard plight of the folk in our village
of Okak came to the ears of the people of Nain,
just ninety miles away. A chance traveller, maybe,
had carried the story ; no seals at Okak, no seals at
all. At once there was a great mass meeting of the
men of Nain.

‘“We are sorry for our neighbours at Okak,’’
they said; ‘‘they have no seals. As for ourselves,
we men of Nain have fared better; we have not
plenty, yet we have some seals, and so we are better
off. Let us make a collection to help our brethren.’’

‘““Taimak ’’ (It is good), said the people, ‘‘ so let
it be.”

So the leaders of the men in the village of Nain
took up a. collection, surely the queerest collection
that ever was made. Not money—no! There was
something that was better than money to an Eskimo
in those days of leanness. Each man as he was able
brought a lump of blubber to this wonderful col-
lection, and when all the men had given there were
three great barrels full. They lashed the barrels
upon sledges, they chose the strongest dogs, and
three men of Nain drove the sledge-teams over the
lonely mountain passes and across the frozen bays
and rivers, ninety miles to Okak.

I remember the coming of those sledges. In the
dark of the evening the dogs of the village began to

108 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

whine ; they smelt strangers, they heard the padding
of feet across the sea-ice in the gloom, and soon a
mighty shout went up as the people rushed to guide
the sledges through the hummocks on the Okak
beach.

‘‘These,’’ said the men of Nain, as they unlashed
the barrels from the sledges—‘‘ these are a present
from the people of Nain to all the people of Okak,
to be given freely because of love and friendliness.’’

‘“‘Nakomék’’ (How thankful), said the Okak
folk—‘‘ Nakomék ;’’ and they smiled and told the
good news to one another, while the little children
jumped and clapped their hands for very glee.
Grave and worthy men, Eskimos all, stood by the
barrels to divide the blubber, while the people waited
with bowls and tubs and pitchforks.

And so we watched them trotting homewards,
each with a lump of the precious blubber, every face
smiling, and, I warrant you, every mouth a-watering
for the thought of the luscious supper soon to come.

CHAPTER XVI
SOLVING A PROBLEM

THE peace of our village has been sadly disturbed.
Now let me tell you that the keeping of peace and
good order in the village is in the hands of four men
—four solid and ordinary Eskimos, who are elected
by the people themselves. Village elders, you might
call them. ‘‘ Angajokaukattiget ’’ is the mouthful of
the Eskimo language by which the people them-
selves know them, and if you pick that seven-
syllabled appellation to pieces, you arrive at ‘the
collection of great men,’’ or, shall we say, ‘‘the
band of leaders.’’ Anyway, ‘‘elders’’ let it be, and
know that the four are grave Eskimos of middle age,
chosen, as you may well imagine, not alone for their
own orderly way of living, but also for the respect
they have earned by their prowess as hunters of
seals and walruses.

The election is a great event. It happens about
Christmas time, and as the church is the only room
big enough to hold the people, in church the election
is held. At the ringing of the bell, in flock the
villagers ; the missionary is at the reading-desk, to
see that all is done with due decorum, and a bit of
paper is handed to every man over the age of
twenty-one. They are the voters, the men of hunt-
ing age. Women’s suffrage had not reached the

109

IIo AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

Eskimos in my day, but the women are in church
all the same, sitting all on one side of the building,
and keenly interested, in their stolid sort of way, to
see who would be chosen.

Now comes the voting. Every man writes four
names on his piece of paper. That is not quite so
simple as it sounds. First there is a great deal of
borrowing of pencils, with much sucking of the
same ; then not a little whispering, and a scratching
of tousled oily heads; then the laborious writing,
every man spelling names as he thinks best ; then a
folding of the papers and the collecting of them in
a box. Always a little waiting while someone, slower
than the rest, pencils out his choice ; but at last the
votes are gathered up—my task, that, the collect-
ing and the telling of the votes.

The missionary solemnly unfolds each paper in
turn and reads the names written there—a little
tittering when some unlikely fellow gets a vote, the
doing of his bosom chum, no doubt; but on the
whole the election is serious. I noticed a singular
unanimity in the voting. Knowing the Eskimos as I
do, I am quite sure that the whole thing had been
well talked over for days beforehand ; next to the
hunting, the election would be the chief topic over
the pipes in the evening.

The votes are counted and the election is over.
‘Will you serve to keep peace and order in this
village ?’’ says the missionary, asking each man in
turn. ‘‘ Ahaila’’ (Yes), says each of the four ; and
the people troop decorously home.

But all this is a digression, for this chapter

SOLVING A PROBLEM EDE

merely tells of the doings of the elders in a time
of crisis.

The peace, as I have said, was sadly disturbed,
and this is how it came about. Just how or when I
cannot say, but true it is that some evil genius had
taught the Eskimos to brew a vile concoction of
treacle and mouldy biscuits, and the effect of this
appalling stuff was that drunkenness began to be
seen in our village.

The brewing was furtive, but it was going on in
several huts. The Eskimos themselves recognised
it as a deed of darkness, and in the dark of the
evening the drinking was done. It was a dreadful
pity to see strong drink taking hold of this simple
people, from time immemorial a teetotal race ; but
there the thing was.

My first knowledge of it came from a shouting
outside, and when I opened the door there was a
fine young hunter standing on the top of a little
slope flinging stones at his wife, who was crouching
below. The man could hardly stand upon his feet,
so drunk was he. When the door opened in fled the
frightened woman, while the man rolled shouting
homewards. The terrified villagers were standing in
a ring, keeping a safe distance ; they thought the
man had a devil. It was the only way by which their
simple minds could explain this roaring madness.
Then we heard more of it. Somebody had pursued
another over the hills with a gun; there had been
an old quarrel between neighbours about an axe,
and one member in his drunkenness bethought him-
self of this, and went battering on his neighbour’s

I12 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

door with a hatchet. For the first time the Eskimos
began to lock their doors. The thing was a terror.
But the secret brewing went on.

Then the elders of the village took action. ‘‘ This
thing is bad,’’ they said; ‘‘the Word is true, for
strong drink is certainly raging. It will ruin the
people ; it must surely cease.”’

They called a mass meeting of the men in one of
the huts, and if you can imagine a mass meeting
of seventy or eighty Eskimos in a hut which would
seem crowded with half the number, you may know
a little of such a meeting as that. The men stood
round the walls, they sat in a heap upon the bed,
they crowded on the floor, standing, sitting on
corners of boxes, leaning over one another ; and you
may conjure up that mob of faces, all browned with
the winter air and the frost, lighted by the glimmer
of a smoking seal-oil lamp, in an atmosphere
stuffy with the smell of fish. But it was a mass
meeting, a meeting of men in a good cause, and
better work could not have been done in the widest
amphitheatre or the most resplendent council
chamber.

Big Josef took the lead—hbig Josef, the tallest of
the Eskimos and a mighty hunter.

“The drinking is bad ; it will spoil the people,’’
he said ; “‘ our village cannot be if such things are
allowed. There never was such among the Eskimos,
never.”’

One after another spoke, asking, answering,
calling up days gone by—for the Eskimos like to
remember what their forefathers did. The palaver

SOLVING A PROBLEM 113

went on into the night, but the end was certain ;
the mind of the people was made up.

‘‘ Kajusimavut ’’ (It is decided), said the elders.
‘‘It is the mind of the people; the drinking shall
cease.’’

Each man who was known to brew was then and
there asked the question publicly : ‘‘ Will you give
up this evil thing ?”’

And one by one the men answered “‘ Yes.’

All but one—young Martine, Gustaf’s servant,
who lived in a little newly built house with his wife
Tabea ; young Martine, who seemed to us all to be
the coming man, for was he not helper to the very
cleverest of all the men who netted seals, and keeper
of the finest team of dogs?

Young Martine said ‘‘ No.’’ He would not give
it up; he liked the drink ; it made him see strange
things ; he would not give it up.

‘We will give you till to-morrow,’’ said the
elders ; ‘‘ you have heard the mind of the people.”’

The meeting broke up, and, true to their promise,
the drinkers went home, and they smashed their
tubs of liquor and poured the reeking stuff upon the
refuse heaps.

To-morrow came, and as the afternoon was
wearing on, and the men were home from the
hunting, the four grave elders went to Martine’s
hut.

‘‘How now, Martine,’’ said they; ‘‘is your
mind made up? Will you cease to brew and
drink ?”’

‘*T will not cease,’’ said the young man.

8

b

II4 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

‘“But you know the mind of the people, of all
the people of the village ?’’

‘““TIlale’’ (But certainly), ‘‘ yet I am going my
own way ; I will not cease my brewing.”’

‘‘Ah, young Martine, and where is your keg of
liquor ?”’

Martine sullenly pointed to a little black barrel
that stood in the corner by the stove.

The four went in and solemnly took the keg ;
they rolled it to the door and set it upright on the
snow. The young man stood sheepishly watching.
Then the leader of the elders took young Martine’s
hatchet, where it stood beside the wood pile, and
with slow and heavy strokes he smashed the keg to
bits. Brown rivers trickled over the snow, and
soaked their way beneath the surface, a witness
until the next snowstorm should come and cover all
with white again.

The elders pulled the hoods of their smocks over
their heads, and made ready to go. They laid the
hatchet in its place beside the wood pile.

‘‘Brew no more, Martine,’’ they said.

They solemnly turned and walked to their several
homes. The drink evil was abolished, and ours was
once more a teetotal village.

CHAPTER XVII
BLIND JULIANA GOES TO CHURCH

AT this stage in our story I think the reader should
be introduced to Juliana. Inasmuch as she was well
content with a dinner of raw fish or seal-meat and
blubber, and wore the usual long-tailed smock with
its trimming of dog-fur and its embroidery in gor-
geous wools, Juliana was just an ordinary Eskimo
woman. But Juliana was something more. A pure-
bred Eskimo, and daughter of old Abia, the head-
man of the village, she was learned and gifted
beyond the usual. That is, she was teacher in the
village school, tailor, and bootmaker in the Eskimo
style for a succession of missionaries and mission-
aries’ wives, well able to play the harmonium, and
alto soloist in the choir. Also she was for some
years night nurse in our little hospital. So Juliana
was a woman of parts. And, withal, a simple,
sensible Eskimo woman.

Now this chapter finds her in her later years,
when she was blind—blind and feeble. The burden
of age was on her shoulders ; long illness had left its
mark upon her ; there was little that she could do.

The services in the church were her chief delight,
and Sunday by Sunday Juliana was there, sitting
on the bench by the door, where she had sat for so
many years as one of the helpers. I can remember
her sprinkling the floor with sand on wet days, so

II5

116 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

that muddy and snowy boots might not spoil the
boards. I have seen her on a snowy morning clear-
ing the flakes from the window-panes with a raven’s
wing tied to the end of a stick. She was a useful
soul in her day, was Juliana. And now she was
blind—blind and old.

Blind though she was, where going to church
was concerned weather seemed to make no difference
to her. In snowstorms and rainstorms, and on bright
and sunny days alike, Juliana was in her usual place,
with her sightless eyes turned towards the mis-
sionary at his reading desk, and a smile of content-
ment and peace upon her placid face.

I wondered sometimes how she came there, for
well I knew the slippery path and the narrow bridge
that led to the village ; well I knew it for the tumbles
I had had. I asked Juliana about it.

‘“ How do you manage to get to church ?””’ said I.

‘““ Father leads me,’’ said blind Juliana.

‘‘ Father ?’’ I asked; for I knew that Juliana’s
father had died in the big sickness of 1904.

‘“Yes,’’ she said, ‘‘ little father—tlittle Abia, the
namesake of my father. I call him ‘father,’ for such
is the custom of the people, and he is the son of my
brother and my father’s namesake. He it is who
comes each Sunday and leads me so that I do not
stumble and fall; and I am thankful, for without
him I could not venture.’’

So that was the explanation. And, as a matter
of fact, a few Sundays later I caught a glimpse of
blind Juliana on her way to church. The bell had
not yet begun to ring, but Juliana always liked to

BLIND JULIANA GOES; TO CHURCH’ ti7

be in good time. She was crossing the bridge by
the side of the hospital, holding a very small boy by
the hand ; and as the pathetic couple passed—the
blind woman with her gentle face, and the small fur-
clad Eskimo boy tugging at her outstretched hand
—and I caught a glimpse of a stolid, chubby face,
the face of small Abia, the son of Matthew, I knew
that I was watching ‘father’ lead his Aunt Juliana
to church.

But there came a day when Matthew and his
family went away to the hunting-place, and small
Abia was carried off on the long dog-sledge, with
its load of bedding and crockery, to learn something
of the harpooning of seals or the catching of trout
—and Juliana’s guide was gone.

And on the next Sunday blind Juliana was in
church as before !

Now there lived in our village a heathen woman.
She was the widow of a famous old chief of the
northern heathen, old Tuglavi of Killinek, and had
come south because her brother had wandered
southward long years before, and she hoped to find
a home with him. First one village and then another
she tried, but her brother was farther still: and
when she reached us the heathen woman was weary
of travelling. She had no relatives among our folk ;
but in the hospitable way that the Eskimos have,
one of the families had offered her a home. So the
heathen woman settled for a time in the Christian
village of Okak.

And it came about one day that she was in

118 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

Juliana’s hut. Maybe she had called for a chat as
she passed on her way to the brook for water ;
maybe she had been bidden to share a scrap of
food, for there is much kindliness among those
simple folk. However it be, the heathen woman was
seated in Juliana’s hut, and the two were chatting
over the doings of the day. Juliana was rather
downcast.

‘’ My brother,’’ she said, ‘“‘has gone away to-
day ; my house will be very quiet ; even my little
father is gone, who used to lead me to church. I
shall not be able to go to church again, because the
path is narrow and rough and covered with ice, and
I should fall and be torn by the dogs.”’

Then the heathen woman proved herself a neigh-
bour.

“*T will come,’’ she said—‘‘ I will come and lead
you to church.”’

‘“ Nakomék ’’ (I am thankful), said Juliana.

So we had the wonderful sight of the heathen
woman leading blind Juliana to church.

If you were out of doors when the bell began to
tinkle, you might see a bedraggled figure in oil-
stained clothes carefully leading the blind woman
—neatly clad, by contrast, in an embroidered
blanket smock—along the bumpy, icy, slippery
path, holding her by the arm where the worst places
came, pausing to tell her of crevices and lumps and
turns, leading blind Juliana to church. And if you
were in your place when this strange pair arrived,
you would hear a shuffling sound in the porch, with

THE

HEATHEN WOMAN.

Facing p. 118

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Bren PULTIAMA GOES T.0 CHURCH 114

a stamping of feet on the sanded floor—stamping
to shake off the frozen snow; then hand in hand
the two came in.

Blind Juliana was at home now; she knew her
way about the church, for in the days before her
blindness she had dusted the benches and set them
straight, and sanded the floor, and lighted the stove,
and stacked the hymn-books all tidily. She walked
to her seat with a confident tread, dragging by the
hand this strange, furtive, peering sister from the
north. They sat there side by side, the heathen
woman staring with open mouth while the missionary
read and prayed and spoke. And when the hymns
were sung, blind Juliana stood with beaming face,
joining in the well-known tunes with her strong con-
tralto voice, and maybe thinking of the time when
she led the altos in the choir and even sang solos
on special days. And the heathen woman: while
they sang she sat huddled, awed by the strange
sound, and looking around in a frightened way,
waiting for the time when she might lead Juliana
home again.

And that is how blind Juliana went to church.

CHAPTER XVIII
AN ESKIMO ROMANCE

THE heathen woman was homesick.

It had been a great adventure for her, this journey
from the north. She had left her native village and
her friends, and had turned her back upon the old
turf hut, where her husband, old Tuglavi, the famous
chief of the northern heathen, had breathed his last.
She was a widow. And she was not old Tuglavi's
only widow! The old man had a wife, the wife of
his youth, grown old with him, and too old and
feeble to do the work of an Eskimo household ; so
old Tuglavi had taken this poor woman for his other
wife, so that there might be someone in the house to
do the work.

Now she was a widow, and she would travel south-
ward. Her brother had gone south long years before,
and she would go to find him. Distance had no
meaning for her ; south he had gone, and southward
she would go as well. It would be better for her, she
thought, to find a shelter under her brother’s roof
than to live as a widow in the north ; she would have
food and a home, and her boys would learn to be
hunters and to help her brother in his work ; and,
above all, she would be with her relatives again—and
what tie is stronger, especially in the mind of an
Eskimo, than the tie of blood ?

120

AN ESKIMO ROMANCE 121

So the heathen woman had set out upon her
journeyings. The way had been long and wearisome.
She moved from village to village, always seek-
ing news of her brother, and always with the same
answer to her questionings: her brother had gone
farther south, farther south.

In the course of her travellings she came to our
village of Okak, and she was very weary. She would
stay among the hospitable folk of Okak for a while
and rest herself before she took up the trail again ;
and so, in the kind and simple way that the Eskimos
have, she was made welcome. And thus it came
about that the heathen woman lived and walked and
worked among the Okak people for many weeks.

The winter was nearly over; the worst of the
storms were gone; the milder days of spring-time
were coming ; and the heathen woman was home-
sick.

She had been happy in our village ; the people had
shown kindness to her, they had given her a roof
over her head and a bed to lie upon, they had fed her
even to the sharing of their last bite, but, after all,
our village was not her home.

If you, my reader, were to go to Killinek, which
was ‘“‘home’’ to that heathen woman, you would
wonder that anyone could love so bare and dreary
a spot. Bleak and dismal, raining and snowing by
turns in the height of the summer, misty and raw
even in August, with scarcely a blade of grass to
relieve the sullen greyness of the rocks, Killinek is
surely of all the villages of Labrador, the most for-
bidding.

122 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

But here was a Killinek woman who had lived for
years as one of the wives of old Tuglavi the chief
in a hideous turf hut on the sodden slope of the hill ;
and even among the neat wooden homes of the village
of Okak, and amid all the hospitality of a well-
ordered Eskimo community, this poor woman was
homesick. She made up her mind that she would
go back to the north, to see her native village once
more, and her children seemed to pine just as eagerly
for their home as she herself.

Now it came about in the spring-time that one of
the Okak missionaries set out on a visit to Hebron,
the next village north, and the heathen woman
begged a lift upon his sledge. She felt that if she
could reach Hebron she would at least have made
a step upon her journey; and she was content to
trust to a chance sledge, or to wait until the ice
should break and a boat be able to travel, and so by
one means or another she would reach her well-loved
Killinek.

I watched the little party set out upon their way.
The woman and her sturdy boys walked ahead along
the track, for they would not weary the dogs by
riding more than they needed ; beside them trooped
the usual bevy of friends and well-wishers, “‘ seeing
them off’’ in Eskimo style by going the first mile
with them. And so they left the village of Okak,
with their faces toward the north; the sledge with
its bunch of trotting dogs turned out of the bay on
to the wide sea ice and was lost to sight behind the
headland, and the crowd that stood watching on the

AN ESKIMO ROMANCE 123

beach and on the jetty went home to breakfast and
to work.
So the heathen woman began her journey home.

There were adventures on the road.

Spring was well advanced, and the day was warm ;
the sea ice was slushy and soft, and in many places
the necks of land were almost bare of snow. It was
a bad day for the dogs; they, poor things, were
heavy with their winter coats, and the toiling in the
sodden track under the warm spring sun scon
wearied them to a mere crawl. At last, halfway to
Hebron, the little caravan came to ariver, a winding,
whirling barrier of water that no dog or sledge could
cross. The road was closed, and the only thing
possible was to return to Okak.

But the heathen woman had set her face towards
her own village, and was not to be turned. The
missionary argued with her and entreated her. But
no, in spite of the river she would push on; she
would find a crossing place; she could, she said,
walk along the rocks and across the steep slopes
where a sledge could not travel ; she knew the direc-
tion, and before long she hoped to reach the settlers’
houses at Nappartok, twenty miles south of Hebron.

So she bade good-bye to the missionary, and with
packs upon their shoulders and a good supply of
food in the hoods of their smocks, she and her boys
trudged out of sight along the river bank.

The missionary felt uncomfortable at letting them
go; it seemed to him that he ought rather to have
compelled them to return with him. But the sledge-

124 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

driver, a sensible, middle-aged Eskimo, had no such
misgivings. ‘“‘ Let them go,’’ he said; ‘‘ they will
find their way.’’ And he was right. The native gift
for path-finding is a wonderful thing, and it was with
a mind free from doubt as to the outcome that the
heathen woman pursued her way on foot.

The missionary turned his sledge homeward again,
and came to Okak in the small hours of the morning.
And in the meantime the heathen woman and her
boys, after hours of rough tramping, had sighted the
Nappartok houses. There, after a rest, they found a
sledge to take them to Hebron.

The rest of the story reads like a romance ; but
none the less it is true, and a delightful bit of Eskimo
history. Wonder of wonders, a Killinek sledge was
waiting at Hebron. A belated mail-bag had been
sent south in the care of two of the Killinek Eskimos,
and the sledge was waiting for a possible return post
from the south.

It was like a glimpse of home to the heathen
woman to see a face from her own village. But more
than that, for before many days were past there was
a wedding at Hebron, when one of the sledge-
drivers, a middle-aged man and a Christian, made
the heathen widow his wife ; and it was a wedding
party that drove away from the village in the cold
air of the morning.

Could anyone imagine a stranger honeymoon?

The newly married couple spent the cooler hours
of dawn and dusk in toiling and plodding through
the melting snow of the mountain passes ; they rested

AN ESKIMO ROMANCE 125

during storms and midday warmth in such shelter as
they could find. It was a week’s hard travelling to
cover that last long stage ; but the heathen woman
was happy, for to her it was the last stage of her
long journey homewards, for in the bleak village of
Killinek home and comfort awaited her.

And there I saw her in the following summer,
living with her husband in a hut on the sea beach,
and in the hospitality of her heart giving a home to
a poor old woman, bent and crippled with age—
old Tuglavi’s other widow.

But the story is not yet ended.

Strangely enough, at the same time that I was
writing the story of how this heathen woman led
blind Juliana to church, the missionary at Killinek
was drawing up his annual report and all unwittingly
telling us the sequel ; for in that report we read that
this same woman has lately been baptised a Chris-
tian, and is now no longer a heathen, but a follower
of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so, by a long and winding road, the heathen
woman has found her home.

CHAPTER XIX
ERNESTINA

I WONDER how she got her name? I can imagine
that her father was hoping for a son, and had
promised some fond uncle to call the boy Ernest ; he
did the best he could by calling his daughter Ernes-
tina.

That is the best explanation that I can suggest,
and very likely it is the right one. But however it
came about, Ernestina is her name, and it is quite
a popular name among the Eskimos. They always
like a name if they can pronounce it easily ; that is
one reason why they like Bible names. Mostly they
take Bible names because they are names out of
God’s Book—a witness, as it were, to their change
from heathenism to the worship of the true God ;
but they like the short Bible names for the very
good and very Eskimo reason that they are easy to
say and to remember. They alter them just enough
to make them sound pleasant and musical to Eskimo
ears. It does not seem to suit their ears to have a
name ending in a consonant; so they either take
away the last letter, and talk of Abraha, Isa, and
Jako, or they put on a vowel at the end, and say
Davide and Samuele. They have a queer weakness
for names with a k in them—in fact, nearly every
Eskimo name has some k’s in it somewhere.

When we started a printing press at the hospital

126

ERNESTINA “124

at Okak, although we had an ordinary fount of type,
we had to write for an extra supply of k’s before we
could print any of the hymns and pamphlets which
we had in view! K abounds everywhere on an
Eskimo page. ‘‘ Kanga kainiarkorka ?’’ (When will
he be likely to come ?) says the Eskimo, or he talks
about making a new “‘ kakkivak ’’ (trout spear).

But so much for Eskimo names. We are talking
of a poor girl who has a name that is not a Bible
name, nor has it a k in it; I suppose that she is
called after somebody who was called after one of
the old missionaries as a compliment. She is Ernes-
tina, and she lives at Okak in Labrador.

The Ernestina I have in my mind is a cripple girl,
and added to her lameness she suffers from an incur-
able form of nerve disease which has affected her
speech. The doctor has told her friends plainly that
there is no medicine that can cure her; she will
always be defective. Something can be done to ease
the pains, and that is all, and her friends must be
very kind and patient with her.

She lives with her grandmother in a little house
on the Okak sea front. She minds the house and
mends the fire, and sometimes on her bright days
she is well enough to play the harmonium. What
wonderful things harmoniums are! I asked Ernes-
tina where it came from. The old grandmother
answered : ‘‘ It was a present from an old missionary
who lived in Labrador.’’ After a long pause she
found herself unable to count the years, but she was
able to tell me his name—and I know that he died
before ever I was born! In spite of its many years

128 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

of service the old harmonium is still in good order ;
it is black with oil and smoke, but Ernestina gets
music out of it, and although it has seen rough usage
it bids fair to see a riper old age yet.

I wish you could look in some day and see Ernes-
tina ; you might find her at that old harmonium. Of
course she stops playing and bashfully comes down
from her stool ; she is very much awed by your visit,
and needs a lot of coaxing before she will go back
to her music. If you sit down on the stool and try
over a tune for her she is in a transport of delight.
She stands shyly by your side, breathless and beam-
ing with pleasure, drinking in the music. No matter
that you are not an accomplished player; Bach’s
fugues would be lost on Ernestina. She would rather
hear a simple Sankey hymn-tune ; her poor, voice-
less lips would follow the melody. She would be
singing and making music in her heart to the Lord—
sweeter music, far, to Him than much fine singing
that comes not from the heart.

I once found Ernestina in a very proud frame of
mind. Some good friend had lent her a sewing
machine, and she was making a dress! Her own
fingers would not serve to cut out the pattern, so the
same kind friend had done the cutting for her ; but
Ernestina could fit the pieces together and stitch
them with the sewing machine. I found her with the
pieces all spread out upon the floor, and she was
full of eagerness to show me how well she could
manage this new accomplishment. Quivering with
pride, she turned the handle, looking up now and
again with the smile of a conqueror and finally dis-

ERNESTINA 129

playing the finished seam with a sort of subdued
triumph. That was on one of her best days.

Poor soul! She has her bad days too—days when
she can only lie in bed, when the pain is bad, and
all the little occupations must be put on one side ;
days which only lifelong sufferers can understand ;
days which make those who do not suffer marvel at
the patience and refinement and beauty of character
which suffering so often brings.

Poor Ernestina! I believe she makes nearly all
her own clothes ; and though her skirts are of patch-
work, she manages to be wonderfully neat. Often
on Saturdays you might see her washing her long-
tailed Sunday “‘sillapak.’’ I must use the Eskimo
word and call it “‘ sillapak,’’ for there is no English
word that describes it. ‘‘Sillapak’’ means ‘“‘the
outside thing of all’’ ; it is made of white calico,
with a short tail in front and a long tail behind.

Ernestina washes her sillapak in the real Eskimo
way. She takes it to the brook and dips it in the
water ; next she spreads it on the rocks and soaps it
well ; then she folds it up, drops it into the brook
again, and tramples on it until she is satisfied that
it is clean. And so you might see Ernestina on a
Saturday afternoon in the short summer, standing
in the middle of the brook and trampling.

The sillapak has a big hood in which the mother
carries her baby; and sometimes I have seen
Ernestina acting nursemaid, shuffling along with a
big bundle on her back—somebody’s little brother
fast asleep in her hood !

Poor Ernestina! Her friends told her about a

9

130 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

surgeon who could cure sick people by taking the
sickness out with a knife. Their ideas were primi-
tive, as Eskimo ideas are apt to be. The art of the
surgeon was new to them, and the stories they told
Ernestina) must have been quaint and queer.
Ernestina came the next day, dressed in her Sun-
day sillapak. She was very self-possessed, and
straightway sat down in a chair, and took off the
red bandanna handkerchief which covered her head.
There she sat, smoothing her nicely parted hair, and
gazing with big, pleading eyes. The young girl who
had come to keep her company stood near the door,
giggling with nervousness. ‘‘ What is it that Ernes-
tina wants ?’’ ‘‘Oh,’’ said the girl, “‘ she has been
told that sickness can be cut out of people with a
knife, and she has come to have the sickness taken
out of her head. Please do it now, so that we can
go home !”’

Poor Ernestina ! Her case is beyond the reach of
any surgeon. It was piteous to see the look of ex-
pectation in her limpid eyes change to the old dull
hopelessness as her fond hope faded from her. She
bears her sad affliction bravely. As she says, in
those poor halting words that only her nearest
friends can understand: ‘‘It is the Lord’s will; I
am His.’’

I remember the time when Ernestina was received
as a member of the Christian Church. It was at a
confirmation service at the Moravian Mission
Station at Okak, when quite a number of young
Eskimo men and women came forward. Ernestina
hobbled bravely in with the rest, and seated herself

ERNESTINA 131

upon a stool just opposite the table where the mis-
sionary sat. When the others answered the ques-
tions put to them, and made their public confession
of faith in Jesus Christ, Ernestina made her meaning
plain with nods, and the happy tears flowed down
her cheeks. What a testimony it is to the reality of
Christianity that these simple-minded Eskimos, and
even the simplest of them, can take God at His
word, and receive inward assurance of salvation, and
show the results of the Spirit working in their lives !

There is one little anecdote that I must still tell
about Ernestina. She came one day, smiling and
shaking with excitement, and handed over a small
package. Inside the parcel was a sum of forty
cents (one and eightpence) in money. ‘‘ What is
this, Ernestina?’’? And Ernestina pointed to the
paper. She wanted to make sure of being under-
stood, so she had got somebody to write on the
paper: ‘‘She wants to give this to the Mission.”’
Poor Ernestina! She cannot earn much. She helps
to pile the damp firewood to dry in the summer sun,
and this brings her in a little ; but forty cents is a
big sum for her, and she must have saved and saved
to bring so much.

And every year since then Ernestina brings forty
cents ‘‘to help the Mission.’’ We have all read
about the widow’s mite ; and here it is, in our own
day, in real life, among a people once spoken of as
degraded and savage.

Yes, Ernestina’s sacrifice is not forgotten; she
does much, just because she does what she can.
The love of God shines on her life, warming it as

132 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

that love does ; and just because the Gospel of the
love of God has taken hold upon the Eskimos of
Labrador, their whole race has been lifted to a
higher plane of living than was possible in heathen

days.

CHAPTER XX
JULIANA’S HOUSE

THE first house in the long line that winds along the
water front after the hospital wood-shed is Juliana’s.
As a matter of fact, the last house, at the far end
of the line, is no house at all. A queer thing to say,
perhaps, but this is the way of it. You see, our
line of shingly beach comes to an end where the
rocks begin, and there, too, the line of houses ends.
Every inch of the beach is faced by that long front
line of huts—and yet not every inch, for at the far
end there stands a square foundation of stones, a
place for a hut with no hut upon it.

‘“‘ Why is there no hut here ?’’ I said to little John.

‘‘Snow,’’ said John; and with a sweep of his
hand he showed how the west wind sweeps along the
beach and turns at the towering rocks to fling its
snow upon that last small corner.

Many young couples have learnt the secret of
that neglected building spot. However much they
may be told by the wiseacres of the village, they
still come along and look at it, and say to them-
selves : ‘‘ Here is a fine place, foundation all ready ;
let us build our home here.’’

I have seen them at work. The young man
fetches trees from the woods ; the young wife helps
him to saw them into beams and rafters. He is top
sawyer, of course, at the saw-pit, because that is

133

134 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

the hardest place and needs the most skill; she is
bottom sawyer down below. Soon a neat little hut
is standing on that square foundation, and a neat
little newly made housewife is cooking by the door-
step, or hanging the skins and the codfish to dry
above the porch.

But with the first storm of winter the little hut is
buried. The young couple dig their window clear,
and make a snow porch to the doorway. Another
storm, and the hut is gone again, buried under a
mighty drift. More toilsome digging. Another
storm, and the young people move their bedding
and their cooking pots, their dogs and all their hunt-
ing gear, and beg a corner in the house of some
better-placed neighbour. In the summer they re-
turn, with the careless smile of the Eskimo, and
take their little hut away and build it again on the
hillside. And that is how the last hut in the line is
no hut at all.

But Juliana’s house. I call it Juliana’s house
because blind Juliana is the most important person
there ; the hut belongs to her brother Benjamin,
who is by no means a clever hunter, but is neverthe-
less head helper in the church, and teacher in the
day-school, and also tenor soloist in the choir.

Now this was a very ordinary Eskimo house,
showing signs of much patching, so that while most
of the boards are grey and weatherworn, some are
new—signs of pieces added on. Benjamin had evi-
dently made his house grow in the usual way of
Eskimo houses. I never saw the house in the pro-
cess of growing; it had finished most of its ex-

JULIANA’S HOUSE 135

pansions before ever I crossed its doorstep ; but I
have watched other houses in the making, and have
chatted with their owners as they went about their
work.

‘‘Hai, Jonas, are you house-building ?”’

‘““No,’’ says Jonas, ‘‘ but my house is too small ;
my children are now three, and last winter I had
not room for the skinning of my seals, so I am mak-
ing my house larger.’’

And Jonas would tear the back wall out of his
house, and lay a fresh foundation of stones beyond
it, and raise a few new uprights, and nail his planks
to them, and fashion a roof to the extension ; and
so the house would seem to have an outgrowth,
proudly referred to by Jonas as his bedroom.

And Benjamin’s house was of this sort. In
course of time it had lost its individuality; the
original hut was represented by four smoke-black-
ened uprights, very convenient for folk to lean
against while they talked or while they waited on a
stormy day for the church bell to ring. The four old
uprights stood in the midst of the floor-space, but
on all sides the walls had been pushed back to meet
the needs of a growing family. The porch had
edged its way so close to the path that the steps up
to the door had lost all dignity, and were no better
than a little ladder ; and the back wall was so close
to the rocks that rose steeply behind it that the roof
became part of the hillside when the winter snow
had fallen, and the boys of the village were wont to
go tobogganing over it for the sheer fun of the
thing.

136 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

And this was the hut where blind Juliana lived—
the hut where she was sitting when the heathen
woman offered to lead her to church ; the hut where
the poor and the feeble were used to come to find
a scrap of food and hear the wisdom of blind
Juliana’s talk.

Juliana was one of the people who always stayed
in the village. The news of codfish in the bay sent
most of the people post-haste to the fishing ; there
were but very few who stayed at home. But the
ones who stayed were well worth meeting; you
could almost count them on your hand. First, the
old widows who hammered the blubber to make oil
for the market and who packed the trout in brine.
You might have met one or the other of them on
the village path, smiling-faced old people, dressed
in sacks all smeared with grease, going to and fro
in their workaday garb, and perfectly happy in their
queer task. One is old Karitas, who blows the
organ in church, for which occasion she changes
her sack-cloth for a fine white smock all fringed
with embroidery ; another is old Henrietta, who
stacks the firewood and waters the gardens, and
covers up the potato plants from the ever ready
frosts and the marauding mice; another is old
Verona, the mother of a family of fine and hand-
some daughters. And then there are the two who
are too feeble to go: poor Ernestina, the cripple
girl, and my old friend Juliana.

I opened the door of Juliana’s house one morning
in the early summer, and I heard the sound of some-
one reading. I could not see at first, for the hut

JULIANA’S HOUSE 137

was dark. In spite of the sunny morning the place
was dull and gloomy, because the window is only
small, and what window there is is not of glass, but
made of a membrane sewn from seal’s bowel, a
queer and creaky substitute that flaps to and fro
with the wind, letting in a little light but no real
sunshine. I made my way across the floor towards
the crackling stove and towards the sound of the
reading. It was Juliana’s voice that I heard. But
reading, no. It was blind Juliana’s voice, saying
first one and then another well-known piece of
scripture—snatches from the Psalms, bits from the
Gospels and the Revelation, all the familiar verses,
easy for me to know although said in the long,
strange words of the Eskimo tongue. And Juliana
was saying them over, rolling them on her tongue,
verily tasting them, it seemed to me; and I could
not help thinking of the old phrase which tells us
that His words are as honey to our taste and sweet
in our mouths, for so it was with Juliana.

“‘No,’’ said Juliana, ‘‘I can no longer read; I
am blind ; but I like to say over the verses I learnt
at school and in the church, and Ernestina likes
it too.”’

‘‘ So Ernestina is here,’’ said I. ‘‘ I had thought
to go and visit her, but here she is. Aksunai,
Ernestina.’’

‘“Yes,’’ said Juliana, “‘ poor Ernestina is often
here. When her grandmother Henrietta goes to
her work in the blubber yard she leads Ernestina to
my house and leaves her here to help me.”’

‘To help you !’’ said I ; and I looked at the pot

138 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

bubbling over the stove and at the crackling fire
that the blind woman was mending with sticks. And
I looked at the poor crouching figure of the para-
lysed girl, and I thought to myself: ‘‘Surely -
Juliana is helping this afflicted one, and not she
helping Juliana.’’ ‘‘ To help you!’’ said I.
““Yes,’’ said Juliana, ‘‘for Ernestina is my

CHAPTER XXI
HENRIETTA’S VISIT

I THINK that of all shy visitors, the shyest was the
one who came up the front-door steps one moonlight
January night. In England visitors knock at the
door and wait, or, if they are on very friendly terms
with the people of the house, tap at the door and
walk in. In Labrador we dispense with all ceremony ;
we follow the Eskimo custom in our visiting ; we
open the door and walk in, with never a knock and
no need of an apology.

But this was a shy somebody.

I heard the front steps creak, as front steps will
creak on a frosty winter night in Labrador: some-
body was climbing slowly to the door. It was quite
a flight of steps that our visitors had to climb, six
or seven, to be as accurate as may be; it reminded
me of the flights of steps up to the tall old town
houses that I knew when I was a child, only in
Labrador our steps are made of wood. Creak, creak,
creak went the steps, and I waited for the opening
of the door.

Nothing happened ; the creaking came to an end,
and that was all. It was not that the door could be
opened silently, for I knew well enough that it was
stuck with the frost, as is the way with doors in
Labrador ; and visitors have quite a habit of thrust-

139

140 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

ing open the door with a jerk, and stamping their
feet in the porch to clear the snow from their boots.
It would not do, you see, to tramp the passage and
the floor of one’s living-room with boots all caked
with snow. And so on that frosty January night I
had every reason to expect a noisy opening of the
door with a stamping of feet to follow. But nothing
happened ; and yet I was quite sure of the creaking
of the steps.

I opened the door of the room and peered into the
passage. The passage was empty, and very cold. I
pursued the matter further, and went into the porch.
There was nothing in the porch but a very biting
draught, and a powdering of snow that had drifted
through the various crevices. The porch is always a
cold place, and it was with a shiver that I turned the
icy handle and pulled open the outer door. A draught
of freezing night air was wafted in, chilling my ankles
and nearly taking my breath away.

And then, at last, I found what I sought; my
frozen pilgrimage to the door had not been in vain ;
my ears had not played me false ; there was someone
on the steps.

There, meekly waiting for the opening of the door,
too shy to turn the handle for herself or even to
knock, stood Henrietta. ‘‘ Aksunai, Henrietta,’’
said I. ‘‘ Itterille’’ (Come in) ; and Henrietta came
in. I thankfully closed the door and shut out the
biting wind ; then I retreated to the passage and left
Henrietta the freedom of the porch. She stamped
her feet, and slapped her skirt, and waved the hood
of her smock ; she took the bandanna handkerchief

HENRIETTA’S VISIT IAI

from her grey old head and flapped the powdery
snow out of its folds ; she smoothed her hair and put
the handkerchief carefully in place again ; then she
came blinking into the lamplight.

A queer little figure, this.

A very short, broad-shouldered woman, bent and
wrinkled with age, with a pair of twinkling little eyes
peering this way and that, and her wisp of grey hair
tied at the back with the white ribbon that showed
she was a widow. This was Henrietta, leading hand
—foreman, I might almost say—in the blubber yard,
skilled in the nauseous task of hammering the oil
from the chopped-up fat ; and ready, when blubber
work was lacking, to turn her hand to anything
useful, and mend your boots and stack your fire-
wood, or scrape the snow from your steps and
windows, or fetch water, or ice, maybe, for your
kitchen tank, or even, in the summer-time, to water
your garden on a dry evening and carry seaweed
from the shore for the better cultivation of your
turnip patch. This was Henrietta.

I led her into the full glare of the lamplight ; and
there, in the warmth of my room, she sat herself
down on the little green bench by the door. Then
came a pause. It was something new for Henrietta
to come to my room at all; I could not remember
seeing her there before, though I had seen her many
times out of doors, as she passed to and fro in the
sackcloth overalls that she wore for her work.

And Henrietta was finding her visit somewhat
new; she sat peering about the room, fixing her
gaze first on one thing and then on another, probably

142 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

wondering in her mind at the strange things we
English folk had in our houses.

So I waited while Henrietta looked about her ; but
I knew that there was cogitation going on in that
old grey head ; no mere curiosity would have brought
her so far afield on a bleak January night. Henrietta
was collecting her thoughts, and presently she cast
down her eyes and began to shake her head.

‘““Kappe, kappe !’’ (Alas !), she said.

‘* And why is it kappe?’’ I asked her.

‘* Ah, but I have sad words to tell you,’’ said old
Henrietta.

‘Sad words,”’ said I ; ‘‘ but that is bad hearing.’’

‘* Ai, ai, sad words,’’ said she, ‘‘ and this is how
it all was.”’

There was another pause, as if the old woman did
not know how to begin ; then suddenly she looked up.

‘You know Ernestina,’’ she said.

Yes, of course, I knew Ernestina, the poor girl
whose limbs are stiff and paralysed, Henrietta’s
granddaughter. |

‘“Well,’’ said Henrietta, ‘to-day I washed
Ernestina’s clothes. I washed them so that she
might have clean clothes for church on Sunday.
You know she still goes to church sometimes, for
she can walk slowly if I lead her, and we start in
good time so as to be there before the bell stops
ringing. So I washed her clothes and hung them
out to dry. And I heard a great noise, and I went
out. And, ai, ai, there I saw that the dogs were
eating Ernestina’s clothes. Eh, the bad dogs! I
drove them away, though I am only a poor weak

HENRIETTA’S VISIT 143

old woman, but I only saved some rags. Most of
the things were eaten, and now Ernestina has got
nothing, and cannot go out and go to church. What
shall I do ?’’

Looking back on it, I hardly know whether I
ought to have been surprised or not, but surprised
I was. Clothes fresh from the wash-tub seemed
something quite new as a diet for dogs. But there
is no apparent limit to the strange appetite of those
queer beasts, and to travel on a sledge behind a team
of Labrador dogs soon gives one some curious
glimpses of their ways. One windy day, some-
where in the wilds of the Kiglapeit mountains, my
fur cap blew off. I had hardly time to turn before it
was engulfed ; the dogs of the sledge following were
upon it with a pounce, and it would have been funny
enough to make me laugh—if my head had not been
freezing—to see the leading dog, the one on the
longest trace and therefore first on the prey, making
valiant efforts to swallow up my cap whole, ear-flaps,
strings, and all. The brute raced on, with a great
bulge slowly travelling along his neck as the un-
accustomed morsel made its way into the interior ;
and behind him panted the whole team, each strain-
ing to the utmost limit of its trace, and all snarling
and wheezing and whining in the extremity of their
desire for a taste.

I have seen gloves go the same way, carelessly
laid down while I chatted with the drivers at a halt-
ing-place, and suddenly snatched away to be made
the centre of a tearing, scrambling, fighting mass of
dogs, all mixed up in a tangle; and the driver has

144 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

hurled himself from the midst of his chat and the
enjoyment of his pipe into the vortex, and the peace
of the winter scene has been made a nightmare of
shouts and howlings and lashing of whips.

And I have still a vision in my mind of the troubled
face of a squat little Eskimo woman—the village
bootmaker—as she came one evening to say:
‘“What trouble, what trouble; your boots, your
Sunday boots, the boots with the white soles. Ai,
ai, but I had made them fine, and scraped them very
white, and hung them on a pole outside the door to
make them whiter with the cold, and, behold, the
dogs have eaten them.”’

But all this is by the way; things made of skin
may be all very well as food for hungry dogs, but
here was old Henrietta sitting on the little green
bench by the door, telling me with rueful face how
the dogs—eh, those bad dogs !—had eaten Ernes-
tina’s clothes—clothes newly washed and hung on
the poles to bleach, and asking me what she should

do !

CHAPTER XXII
THE OLDEST CHAPEL SERVANT

WHEN I pulled aside the curtains on that stormy
January morning, I saw the oldest chapel servant
going to his work. It was a terrible morning, the
sort of morning that only those who have lived a
winter in such a land as Labrador can properly
imagine ; indeed, terrible is the only word that seems
at all suitable in speaking of it. The wind was swoop-
ing down from the west with a ceaseless roar, and
the air was filled with powdery snow. When you
have made all your plans for a journey by dog-
sledge, and you wake to a morning like that, your
driver will wave his hand to the west and say,
‘* Ajornarpok ’’ (It is impossible)—‘“* pertok ’’ ; and
in that short and impressive word, one of the few
short words in a language of long ones, he sums up
the terrors of the weather. ‘‘ Pertok’’ (drift), the
weather that the dogs will not face ; the weather that
freezes your nose and your cheeks ; the weather in
which men get lost. And it was pertok on that
January morning.

But the oldest chapel servant was at his work as
usual. The wind had banked up a drift around the
door of the church, and the old man was digging a
path through it with a shovel. Sometimes as he
turned I could see the frost upon his beard and eye-
brows, but for the most of the time his back was

145 fe)

146 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

turned to me, and I watched his active old figure,
clad in sealskins with a hood pulled down low over
his forehead, as he plied his shovel with deliberate
strokes. He was areal Eskimo ; he did not seem to
mind the weather. At times he had to brace himself
against the wind, and his smock flapped as the gusts
caught it ; but he worked steadily on, making a way
to the church.

Soon he had reached the door ; he banged it open
and went into the porch, and I knew by the shovel-
fuls of snow that came flying out that he was clearing
away what had blown in during the night. When
his work was done he slammed the door again,
shouldered his spade, and tramped off homeward.

I watched the people come along the newly cut
path while the bell was ringing for the morning meet-
ing ; then, muffled to the eyebrows, I braved the
short passage myself.

Somewhere in the porch the oldest chapel servant
was toiling at the bell-rope; I could hear the
measured scrape, scrape, scrape of the cord against
the woodwork as I sat in my place in church.
Presently the last straggler among the worshippers
was seated, snow was wiped out of eyes and hair,
and hymn-books were brought to light from pockets
and the legs of boots and the hoods of sealskin
smocks ; the brawny hunter at the organ cast a
glance over his shoulder and began to bring his
voluntary to an end; the bell ceased its clanging,
and the old man came in. He closed the door, stoop-
ing to clear away a wedge of snow that the passing

Steed

‘“THE OLDEST CHAPEL SERVANT,”

Facing p. 146

Pie OLons tT CHAPEL SERVANT. 147

of many feet had left ; then he walked across the
church to the vestry and ushered in the preacher.
A hush fell upon the crowded church, the last notes
from the organ died away, the missionary announced
the opening hymn, and the oldest chapel servant
took his seat among the others on the chapel
servant’s bench. Five men there were, chapel
servants all. They seemed just ordinary men, such
men as you might see at any of the fishing camps or
hunting grounds where the Eskimos are wont to
gather, clad, all of them, in native garb of blanket
or of spotted sealskin ; men with faces browned by
constant wind and storm, and shaggy hair well
streaked with grey; men middle aged or elderly,
with looks of dignity and thoughtfulness—these were
the chapel servants.

Their duties? They are the men who keep the
house of God neat and tidy ; they sprinkle the sand
upon the floor to save the well-scrubbed boards from
the wetness of sodden and snow-covered boots ; they
clear the path to the door, and brush away the snow
that gathers on the window panes; they ring the
bell when the time for meeting comes ; they are the
spokesmen for the people in the affairs of the
church ; they are the right-hand men of the mission-
ary in church and village ; they are the councillors
in matters of difficulty and the advisers in disputes ;
hunters and fishermen, all of them, they are an
example respected of all. And there are women
chapel servants too, quietly and meekly helping in
the tidying of the church, and going to and fro as
workers among the women and girls. And their

148 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

reward? Of payment none. To them it is enough
that they are honoured by being chosen to serve the
house of God, and with willingness and a cheerful
mind they carry out their allotted task. Such are the
chapel servants.

I was in church again for the closing meeting of

the day. Another man was at the door, and the
oldest chapel servant was behind the table, reading
in his high-pitched voice the words of the hymn he
had chosen to begin the worship. A fine old figure
of a man, this. Though his day as a hunter was
done, there was a hint of bygone power and
prowess in eye and arm and shoulder. He had been
a mighty hunter, and the boys of the village still
whispered tales of his doings as he passed by them
at their play.
_ There was a great dignity in the rugged face and
the mass of hair now almost white; there was a
great simplicity in the quiet, aged voice, and in
the homely native smock of snow-white calico ;
there was a great and touching earnestness in the
everyday words of the old man’s prayer.

“Yes, Thou hast been my Father for many
years, certainly a great many years—oh, how
thankful !—yes, and I have been a weak child.
Thou hast forgiven, for the sake of Jesus; Thou
knowest that I am weak. And these little ones here,
these boys, these girls, Thou art their Father ; let
Thy words come into their hearts, that they may
grow up loving Jesus and serving God their Father.
Yes, how thankful we all are for daily food ; Thou

THE OLDEST CHAPEL SERVANT 149

givest everything. And we are met at the end of
the day to thank our Father. Care for us through
the stormy night. Let the wind grow less that the
edge of the ice may be safe and the hunters prosper.
Let us not forget that Thou art watching over us,
day and night, giving us food and clothing and let-
ing us sleep in safety. Go with us to our homes and
live among us there, for we are weak, and we do
wrong so easily. Oh, how thankful we are, for the
sake of Jesus, Who died for us all.”’

The old man’s gentle, quavering voice was lost
in the murmur of many voices, as we joined with
him in saying the Lord’s Prayer. Missionaries and
hunters, and buxom Eskimo mothers gently swaying
their little ones in their hoods, and tiny children
lisping out the long words that they had lately
learnt in school, all of us together, we prayed to
God and sang our evening hymn ; then at the words
of benediction, spoken in the same quiet, shaking
voice, we took our books and made our way home-
ward.

As I climbed the steps to the hospital the oldest
chapel servant passed along the path below. His
hood was pulled low over his forehead, his shoulders
were bowed, and his smock drawn tightly round him
for the piercing, whirling wind ; he plodded steadily
on, sure-footed in the deepening snow that lay upon
the slippery path, and I watched him pass out of my
sight in the drift and the gathering darkness, going
home to his supper of seal-meat.

it was summer-time. In the calm of the evening

I50 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

a boat came beating into the bay—some fisher, I
thought, home with his catch. With a last long
tack it came beside the jetty, and I recognised the
men from the camping ground where old Abia had
his tent. I watched the steps for the old man’s com-
ing, but instead of the figure that I knew so well it
was a limp and tragic blanket bundle that I saw,
borne gently from the boat by four others from the
fishing place; and as I watched the little group
come up the pier, silent and slow, I knew that our
oldest chapel servant was gone. And as I spoke to
them they told me of his going ; how he had passed
away, as many old Eskimos do, working to the last,
and falling asleep like a tired child, and with a
child’s trust in the love of the Father in heaven.

We shall miss the familiar figure of the old man
passing to and fro amongst us; we shall miss the
kindly, rugged face and the mop of snowy hair ; we
shall miss the quiet voice that never tired of speak-
ing of the love of God.

As the missionary said at the meeting that night
in the church, old Abia had served God with a
whole heart for more years than he could remember.
Here was a true Eskimo, a mighty hunter in his
day, and a thorough Christian all the time; and
such men as this are a living proof of the truth of
the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

CHAPTER XXIII
HOME

THE tourists have been telling me that our village
is a pretty place. And they are right.

It lies at the head of a little bay, nestling at the
foot of the steep hills that make a half circle around.
The tops of the hills are patched with snow, and
the grey slopes are splashed with green, with here
and there the colour of wild flowers. The trim white
mission house and church, the long line of grey huts
at the water’s edge, the jetty, in spite of the way in
which the freezing sea has bent it and heaved it out
of shape—all these are very pleasing to the eye,
and especially to the eye tired with much travelling.
There are leaden days, when the sea is sullen and
the air is bleak with rain, when the water drips from
the corners of the huts and the village path is slip-
pery with mire ; but I am pleased when the tourists
come on a fine day, with a bright blue sky and a
sparkling sea, so that they may carry away a happy
memory of this simple little settlement.

The main “‘street’’ of the village winds along
the water line. There is only a narrow path between
the houses and the sea, and the tides wash the very
doorsteps when the weather is rough. If you walk
along the path you have the idea that some of the
huts have been trying to elbow their way to the
front between their neighbours, so close packed

151

152 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

they are, and so near are some of the disappointed
ones that stand behind. It means much to an
Eskimo to live on the front line. At high tide his
boat can come to the door and save him much weary
carrying ; and in winter-time there is no hill up
which his dogs must toil, for that great broad road
from north to south, the frozen sea, lies flat before
him.

The huts on the hillside seem a little more aloof ;
they have more room; they stand in solitary ones
and twos; but then they get the full brunt of the
storms, and are buried to the chimney-pipes in snow
when winter comes. And so there is keen competi-
tion for the places on the sea front, and huts there
are handed down from one generation to the next.

I thought that young Jako had come into good
fortune one day, for as I walked one wintry day
along the path between the houses and the beach I
came upon him chopping wood. I stopped to pass
the time of day and to ask about the hunting, for
this young man was one of the handiest with the
skin canoe and the long harpoon. And as he told
me of the seals and the walrus, he went on chopping
wood. I saw other men a-chopping, for this was
winter weather. As he paused to roll another log
beneath his foot, I could hear the sound of axes
echoing among the huts; the men were chopping
firewood for their stoves. And then it dawned
upon me.

‘My friend,’ I said, “‘surely this is not your
house ; you used to live upon the hillside. Have
you moved and come to live upon the sea front ?”’

HOME 153

‘‘No, no,’’ he said, and laughed; ‘‘no, no, I
have not moved. I still live up there’’—and he
waved his hand towards the slope of the hill.

‘Then why Pinal,

He looked at me. ‘‘ Well,’’ he said, and pointed
to the tumbledown hut half covered in snow, ‘‘ Old
Henrietta lives in this hut—and old Henrietta is a
widow.’’ And he fell to his chopping again.

But to come back to the tourists and the mail
boat.

Our village is a pretty place, but whether the day
be bright or dull, in sun and rain and snow and
sleet alike, the Eskimos love their village ; they love
their barren frozen land. However pretty the vil-
lage may look to the eyes of a traveller, the fact
remains ; there are no crops, no flocks in Labrador.
But never mind; Labrador is the home of the
Eskimos, and seems to be their chosen land.

I was watching the mail steamer get up her
anchor, after one of her rare visits. The tourists
had gone, the gangway steps were hoisted up, and
there was a clanging of bells as the ship slowly
turned her nose to the open.

But a little knot of folk still stood upon the jetty ;
and I saw people go carrying things. A man walked
after the rest, and turned along the path towards
me. He wore a blue suit, a straw hat, a collar and
tie; and yet, as he came towards me there was
something about the build of his figure, something
in the lithe carriage and the square face, that made
me say to myself: ‘‘ This is an Eskimo ; in spite of
his clothes he is one of the People.’

154 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

He drew nearer, and there was no mistaking the
face, with its brown eyes and high cheek-bones ; he
was an Eskimo.

‘““Good-morning,’’ said he; and ‘‘ Aksunai,”’
said I, giving him the fine old Eskimo greeting.
His face lit up at the sound of it, and “‘ Ahaila,”’
he answered in proper Eskimo style ; then we fell to
chatting.

There we stood upon the stony path and talked,
and I found myself listening to as strange a tale
of wanderings as I have ever heard. First he spoke
in English, for it seemed his native tongue was half-
forgotten ; but soon he fell back on Eskimo, speak-
ing the words with a queer half-foreign accent.

‘IT was born in this village of Okak,’’ said he ;
‘“maybe you knew my father; his name was
Samuel. No? Well, they tell me he has been dead
these many years, and I shall see his grave in God’s
garden. I went away on a ship when I was a young
man, for I would see the world, and | had heard of
much money to be earned. For many years I have
sailed in ships, always working, and sometimes
doing work on land. I have been to New York and
London and Madrid and the towns of South
America, and the cities are very fine, and the people
are a great multitude. But I was always thinking
of Labrador ; and I was alone. Now I have come
home, and I am thankful. Yes, the world is very
great and the cities are very wonderful, but
Labrador is the best land of all.’’

He gazed about him with a wistful smile on his
bronzed face ; he feasted his eyes once more upon

HOME 155

the bare scenery of his childhood—the circle of
bleak hills, all sprinkled with snow ; the grey water
and the stony beach ; the wooden huts on the hill-
side, so different from the tall buildings he had seen.

‘‘Yes,’’ he said—‘‘ yes, I have come home.”’

And so it was. This pathetic wanderer, this man
on the verge of middle age, he had felt the call of
his native land and had come home. His parents
were dead, the playmates of his boyhood had grown
to middle age like himself, but the call of home
had gripped him. And so he settled down among
the Okak folk ; he found food and shelter in their
hospitable homes. With a smile upon his face he
sat polishing his gun; he bound his new harpoon
with thongs ; he learnt to hunt again. In spite of
all that he had tasted of civilised cookery during
the years of his wanderings, the flavour of raw seal-
meat was still pleasant to his palate. At heart he
was an Eskimo. He made his way once more to
the church where he had sat as a little child, and
took his place humbly among the others. He drank
in eagerly the Word of God. How long since he
had heard it in his own tongue! He sang again the
old familiar hymns ; indeed, he was at home. Soon
he married a sensible Eskimo girl, and the two of
them set up their housekeeping in a little wooden
hut that his own hands had built. And such is the
story of a wanderer.

It seems a pity to end up these chronicles of our
village on a note of sadness, but so it must be.
Since the days when I dwelt among these kindly

156 AN ESKIMO VILLAGE

folk, and travelled and camped with them and had
the freedom of their homes, first the measles, and
then the dreaded influenza, has taken its heavy
toll. Little John (the wonderful pathfinder and
driver of sledges), Jako and Kornelius, Juliana,
Ernestina, and the others that are named in these
pages—they are gone, and the village is well-nigh
forsaken. But perhaps it will come into its own
again—who knows? I hear of families going back,
because the hunting is so good ; and maybe in days
to come we shall see again the little children playing
by the brook and the women trampling at their
washing.

But to me the village will always live. The people
there have left upon my mind a memory of kindli-
ness that years cannot wipe out; and if I have
given the reader the same impression of a hospitable,
good-natured, easy-going folk, facing life with a
smile, then I have given what I feel to be a true
picture of those friends of mine, the Eskimos.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY
BILLING AND SONS, LTD., GUILDFORD AND ESHER

263953

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Hutton, Samuel. King

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