The Klondike Mines.
Far up in the northwest of Canada, near the borders of Alaska, are the famous Klondike mines. You have probably heard of them, and of the long, hard journey a person must take to get there. Such wonderful stories have been told of the riches one can bring away from these mountains, that many a young man has left home and friends to seek his fortune there. Now-a-days it is easier to reach the Klondike mines than it was a few years ago, but the country is cold and dreary and most of the food must be brought from a distance, so that few white children have found their way there. Yet as they sit in their cosy homes, they are glad to listen to the stories of that wild country, told to them by the brave men who have been to the Klondike gold regions.
CHAPTER V
Little Folks of Labrador
East of the large bay where Henry Hudson lost his life is the peninsula of Labrador. Although it is farther south than Greenland or Alaska, its shores are very bleak and bare, because of cold winds that blow inland from the ocean. You can easily guess that this country is the home of Eskimos who seem the best fitted of all people to live in the lands of ice and snow.
Some white children are to be found there, however. Their fathers are fishermen who get a living for their families out of the icy waters of the ocean. Sometimes, too, they hunt the deer, or set traps for other wild animals. In the summer time the children search for birds’ eggs, and in the autumn the men and boys keep on the lookout for eider-ducks, wild swans, ducks, geese and ptarmigan. The meat of these birds is sweet and tender, while the feathers make warm beds, pillows and quilts.
The children of the fishermen paddle about in the rough waters in their canoes when many other children would be afraid to venture out from the shore. They ride over the snow in low sledges drawn by half-tamed, surly dogs. They spend many a day fishing for cod and salmon. They hunt for the berries, ripening in the sunshine of the short summer. They play with their Eskimo neighbors whom they meet once a week to study their Bible lessons with the kind missionaries, who have come to live among them.
Each Eskimo house is entered by a long, low passage, made of logs and turf. The floor of the one big room is covered with boards, and a long, wooden platform at one end is the sleeping place for the whole family. On another side is a fireplace lined with pebbles, where the mother cooks the food for the family. There is a window in the house or maybe there are two, so that altogether the Eskimos of Labrador can be far more comfortable than their brothers and sisters of Greenland.
They live in much the same way, however. They dress in furs; they fish; they kill seals; they hunt the deer; they ride over the country in low sledges drawn by unruly dogs; they make kayaks, in which they paddle about among the islands near to the shore. They are not obliged to build snow or stone houses like their brothers in Greenland. Cold as it is, forests of spruce and pine grow not very far inland; so that they are able to get plenty of logs for the walls of their houses. These they plaster so thickly with turf, that the wind cannot make its way inside.