Cribbage-boards of Walrus Tusks
The scenes etched in the larger represent the events of one year of the carver.
Where did the Eskimo get his versatile ability? Only the walrus knows. The whalers have inducted the Eskimo into the art of making cribbage-boards. They use for each board a complete tusk of walrus-ivory, covering the whole with a wealth of descriptive carvings illustrative of all that comes into the yearly round of an Eskimo's life,—ice-fishing, bear-hunting, walrus-sticking. So far as we could find out, the Husky's connection with cribbage ceased with his making these edition de luxe boards. He seemed himself to have gathered no inkling of the fine points of that game which one instinctively associates with Dick Swiveller as tutor and as pupil the little Marchioness, "that very extraordinary person, surrounded by mysteries, ignorant of the taste of beer, and taking a limited view of society through the key-holes of doors." In the world outside, far from igloos and ice-floes, where people gather round cheery Christmas fires with "one for his nob," "two for his heels," and "a double run of three," these ivory crib-boards are sold for from seventy-five to one hundred dollars each. We have two among our most treasured trophies, and with them an ivory ring beautifully formed which we saw made. Set in the ring is a blue stone of irregular shape which was fitted into its ivory niche with a nicety of workmanship that few jewellers could attain. I had fashioned for me also a gavel in the shape of a sleeping seal, made of fossil ivory from the Little Diomedes. The contrast of the weathered brown of the outside of the ivory with the pure white of the inner layers, when worked up into a carved design, gives the effect of cameo and intaglio combined.
We tasted many new Eskimo dishes. When, on our return, we confessed that the brain of the seal served here is a delicious dish, we ran against the sensibilities of refined natures. But why is it cruder to enjoy seal's brains â la vinaigrette, than to tickle our taste with brains of the frolicking calf? The seal furnished a more equivocal dinner than this, nothing less than entrails au naturel, which our hostess draws through her fingers yard by yard in pure anticipative delight, each guest being presented with two or three feet of the ribbon-like pièce de résistance. The scene that jumps to our memory as we watch this feast of fat things is connected with food-manipulations in Chicago. It was down at Armour's in the stockyards that we had seen Polacks and Scandinavian girls preparing in the succulent sausage a comestible that bore strange family semblance to that which our friends are now eating before us, this linked sweetness long drawn out.
Useful Articles Made by the Eskimo
A—Eskimo soapstone lamp which burns seal-oil. The wick is of reindeer moss.
B—Eskimo knife of Stone Age.
C—Its modern successor, fashioned from part of a steel saw, with handle of ivory. This is the knife used by the women; note how the old shape is retained.
D—Eskimo Tam O'Shanter. The band is of loonskins, the cap proper being carefully constructed from swans' feet. This admirably shows the cleverness of the Eskimo in adapting natural forms to economic use, each foot of the swan being a true sector of a circle.
E—Old-time stone hatchet.
F and G—Knives filed from saw-blades, with bone handles.
H—Mortar for pulverising tobacco into snuff.
I—Needle set in a wood handle, and by rapid rotary motion used to pierce ivory.
Mr. John Firth, of the Hudson's Bay Company here, gives us much information regarding these people who for thirty-seven consecutive years have traded with him. The Kogmollycs have been here "from the beginning," the Nunatalmutes moving into this region in 1889, driven out of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, by a scarcity of game. The two tribes live in peace and intermarry. The aged among them are respected. Criminals and lunatics are quietly removed from the drama. Supposed incurables commit suicide and in that act reach immediately a hot underground heaven.
Nature to these Eskimo is especially benign. The junction of the Mackenzie and the Peel is covered with a forest of spruce, and even to the ocean-lip we trace foot-prints of moose and black bear. In the delta are cross, red, and silver foxes, mink and marten, with lynx and rabbits according to the fortunes of war. The Eskimo declare that, east of Cape Parry, bears are so numerous that from ten to twenty are seen at one time from a high hilltop.
The Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs, the man with the best stories and the most inimitable way of telling them, is Roxi. It was Roxi who gave us the love story of his cousin the Nuntalmute Lochinvar. This young man wooed a maid. The girl's father had no very good opinion of the lad's hunting ability and was obdurate. The lover determined to take destiny into his own hands. A ravine of ice stretched between his igloo and that of the family to whom he would fain be son, and over the chasm a drift-log formed a temporary bridge. Lothario, one night, crossed the icy gully, entered the igloo of his elect, seized her in her shin-ig-bee or sleeping-bag and lifted the dear burden over his back. In spite of struggles and muffled cries from within, he strode off with her to his side of the stream. The gulch safely crossed, he gaily kicked the log bridge into the gulf and bore his squirming treasure to his own igloo floor. He had left his seal-oil lamp burning and now it was with an anticipative chuckle of joy that he untied the drawstring. We end the story where Roxi did, by telling that the figure which rolled out sputtering from the shin-ig-bee was the would-not-be father-in-law instead of the would-be bride!