way. The little girls, standing in a row of from three to five, often jump up and down in the same manner, keeping a sort of time with the thumping of their heels to the rude songs that they are spluttering out in jerks and gasps as unmusical as the hammering of their heels. A lot of these little damsels would favor us with a short version of this stiff-jumping, spluttering melody whenever they were particularly grateful for some small gift we had presented to them.

A capital game played by the little girls, and by some of the smaller boys, is a rude sort of ballgame. Thick sealskin leather is made into a ball about the size of our common base-ball, and then filled about two-thirds full with sand. If completely filled, it would be as hard and unyielding as a stone, and the singular sliding way it has of yielding because of its being only partially filled, makes it much harder to catch and retain in the hands than our common ball. The game is a very simple one, much like our play with bean-bags, and consists simply in striking at the ball with the open palm of the hand, and, when there is a crowd of players, in keeping the ball constantly in the air. This is a favorite summer game when the snow is off the ground and the people are living in sealskin tents. No doubt it affords considerable

shouting and loud and boisterous merriment out-ofdoors, you may be almost certain of finding, when you go to your tent door, that all the children of the village are engaged in a game of "sand-bag ball."

Another Eskimo out-of-door amusement much resembles the old Indian game of "Lacrosse." It is played on the smooth lake ice, with three or four small round balls of quartz or granite, about the size of an English walnut. These are kicked and knocked about the lake, with plenty of fun and shouting, but utterly without any rules to govern the game.

It takes a long time to grind one of these irregular pieces of stone into a round ball, but the Eskimo people are very patient and untiring in their routine work, and with them, as with the Indians, time is of hardly any consequence whatever. The number of years that they will spend in plodding away at the most simple things shows them to be probably the most patient people in the world.

When we were near King William's Land, I saw an Eskimo working upon a knife that, as nearly as I could ascertain, had engaged a good part of his time some six years preceding that date. He had a flat piece of iron, which had been taken from the wreck of one of Sir John Franklin's

ships, and from this he was endeavoring to make a knife-blade, which, when completed, would be about twelve inches long. In cutting it from this iron plate he was using for a chisel an old file, found on one of the ships, which it had taken him two or three years to sharpen by rubbing its edge against stones and rocks. His cold-chisel finished, he had been nearly as many years cutting a straight edge along the ragged sides of the irregular piece of iron, and when I discovered him he had outlined the width of his knife on the plate and was

The

the same purpose. We had with us a great number of glovers' needles, and these we traded for the iron ones, which to us were great curiosities. women do some wonderfully neat sewing with these needles, considering the nature of the implements and the coarse thread of reindeer sinew which they use. This sinew is stripped from the reindeer's back in flat pieces about eighteen inches long and two inches wide. The Eskimo woman's spool of thread consists of a bundle of these strips of sinew, hung up in the igloo, from which she

cutting away at it. It would probably have taken him two years to cut out this piece, and two more to fashion the knife into shape and usefulness.

The file which he had made into a cold-chisel was such a proof of labor and patience that it was a great curiosity to me, and I gave him a butcher's knife in exchange for it. Thus almost the very thing he had been so long trying to make he now unexpectedly found in his possession. When I told him that our factories (or "big igloos," as I called them for his easier understanding) could make more than he could carry of such butcherknives during the time we had spent in talking about his, he expressed his great surprise in prolonged gasps of breath at this manifest superiority of the Kod-loou-sah, as the Eskimo call the white

men.

Among the women of this same tribe I found a number of square iron needles that they had taken months to make, slowly filing them on rough, rusty iron plates and occasionally using stones for

"SAND-BAG BALL."

It is

strips a thread whenever she needs one. very strong, and will cut through the flesh of one's fingers before it can be broken. The Eskimo braid it into fish-lines, bow-strings, whip-cord, and nearly always have a ball of it on hand in the house braided up and ready for use.

Before the Eskimo became acquainted with white men, and learned to use their better implements, many household articles were made from bone and the ivory walrus tusks. Among these were forks, spoons, and even knives, of which a few designs are shown on the next page. Very few are in existence now, but some of them were much more ornamental than those in the illustration, for, as I have said, the northern natives do not hesitate to begin anything for want of time in which to complete it; and if they only have the ingenuity to manufacture odd or pretty designs, they have plenty of leisure and plenty of patience to carve them out.

Many of the smaller and odd pieces left from the tusk are carved into figures of birds and animals.

Occasionally you will see some old woman of the tribe with quite a bagful of ivory dogs, ducks, bears, swans, walrus, seals, and every living thing with the form of which they are familiar. They will make rude dominoes and sit and play with them for hours at a time during their long winter evenings. And not toys only, but many articles of utility also are thus carved from the ivory taken from the tusks of the walrus. Walrus and seal spear-heads, and the sharpened head of the lances they used in killing the musk-ox and polar bear, were formerly thus made. In fact, it would have been almost impossible for the Eskimo to exist without this valuable portion of the walrus, before an acquaintance with the white men enabled them to secure iron and guns to replace their own rude implements. The principal use now made of the tusks is to trade them in quantities to the whalers, who pay for them in such merchandise as the natives need.

The Eskimo have no money of any sort, and know nothing of its use. In fact, they know very little about the true value of any one thing as compared with others; and if they desire a needle, or any other small article, they are ready to give in exchange for it a garment or object which you, brought up to compare the values of things, would know to be worth ten, or possibly one hundred, times as much. The poor creatures are thus often badly cheated by unprincipled persons who take advantage of this trait of their character, and they frequently receive little or nothing for things which in our own country are very valuable. I once saw such a man give twenty-five musket-caps to an Eskimo boy for five pretty, white fox skins, which, at that rate, would have been one cent of our money for three fox skins; and the skins could readily be sold for five dollars when he reached the United States.

A favorite Eskimo amusement is one which both the white and Indian boys sometimes play with the bow and arrow. It is to see how many arrows can be kept in the air at one time. The Eskimo boy, with his quiver pulled around over his shoulders so that he can get the arrows quickly and readily, commences shooting them straight up into the air, and when the first arrow thus shot up strikes the ground, he must at once stop. The number of arrows he has shot indicates his score, which he will compare with that made by the other boys. Sometimes they will only count those that in descending stand upright in the snow, and in this case they will shoot all that are in their quivers.

At another time they will count only those that stick upright within a certain area, generally a circle of from twenty to thirty yards in diameter; these must all be shot from the bow by the time the first arrow strikes within the space marked out, and in this case considerable precision and rapidity in shooting are required to make a good score. The boys will often shoot a single arrow high into the air and try to intercept it with another one sent straight horizontally above the ground as the first one rapidly descends. The Eskimo and Indians and other savage tribes who are skilled in the use of the bow and arrow, can shoot an arrow so that it will go somewhat sidewise. They practice this way of shooting when trying to hit a descending arrow, or one stuck upright in the ground. It must, however, be remembered that the Eskimo are not as good bowmen as are many of the other savage tribes, who gain a part or all of their living by this instrument; the Eskimo use spears and lances much more frequently, and where accuracy is especially needed, bows are seldom employed. With those Eskimo who come into frequent contact with white men, guns have now altogether taken the place of bows and arrows.