It must not be supposed, however, that the whale, seal and walrus constitute the entire food supply of the Arctic. There is scarcely any more toothsome delicacy than reindeer, the tongue of which is very dainty and succulent. There is one peculiarity about its flesh—in order to have it in perfection it must be eaten very soon after being killed; the sooner the better, for it deteriorates in flavor the longer it is kept. Indeed, the Eskimo do not wait for the animal heat to leave the carcass, as they eat the brains and paunch hot and smoking.
While our gastronomic enthusiasm did not extend this far, we dined occasionally on fresh trout from a Siberian mountain lake, young wild ducks as fat as squabs, and reindeer, any of which delicacies could not be had in the same perfection at Delmonico's or any similar establishment in New York for love or money. There is scarcely any better eating in the way of fish than coregonus—a new species discovered at Point Barrow by the Corwin—and certainly no more dainty game exists than the young wild geese and ptarmigan to be found in countless numbers in Hotham inlet. At the latter place, doubtless the warmest inside the straits, are found quantities of cranberries about the size of a pea, which not only make a delicious accessory to roasted goose, but act as a valuable antiscorbutic. These berries and a kind of kelp, which I have seen Eskimo eating at Tapkan, Siberia, seem to be the only vegetable food they have. The large quantities of eggs easily procurable, but in most cases doubtful, also constitute a standard article of diet among these people, who have no scruples about eating them partly hatched. They seemed never to comprehend our fastidiousness in the matter and why our tastes differed so much from theirs in this respect. They will break an egg containing an embryonic duck or goose, extract the bird by one leg and devour it with all the relish of an epicure. Gull's eggs, however, are in disrepute among them, for the women—who, by the way, have the same frailties and weaknesses as their more civilized sisters—believe that eating gull's eggs causes loss of beauty and brings on early decrepitude. The men, on the other hand, are fond of seal eyes, a tid-bit which the women believe increases their amorousness, and feed to their lords after the manner of "Open your mouth and shut your eyes."
Game is, as a rule, very tame, and during the moulting season, when the geese are unable to fly, it is quite possible to kill them with a stick. At one place, Cape Thompson, Eskimo were seen catching birds from a high cliff with a kind of scoop-net, and I saw birds at Herald island refuse to move when pelted with stones, so unaccustomed were they to the presence of man. In addition to being very tame, game is plentiful, and it is not uncommon, off the Siberian coast, to see flocks of eider ducks darkening the air and occupying several hours in passing overhead. It was novel sport to see the natives throw a projectile known as an "apluketat" into one of these flocks with astonishing range and accuracy, bringing down the game with the effectiveness of a shotgun.
Game keeps so well in the Arctic that an instance is known of its being perfectly sweet and sound on an English ship after two years' keeping, and whalemen kill a number of pigs, which they hang in the rigging and keep for use during the cruise. It is also noticeable that leather articles do not mildew as they generally do at sea, some shoes kept in a locker on board the Corwin having retained their polish during the entire cruise.
The food of the Eskimo satisfies their instinctive craving for a hydrocarbon, but they do not allow themselves to be much disturbed or distracted in its preparation, as most of it is eaten raw. They occasionally boil their food, however, and some of them have learned the use of flour and molasses, of which they are very fond.
Their aversion to salt is a very marked peculiarity, and they will not eat either corned beef or pork on this account. It may be that physiological reasons exist for this dislike.
SOCIAL AND DOMESTIC RELATIONS.
Omitting other ethnographic facts relative to the Eskimo, which might be treated in a systematic way except for their triteness, we pass from the means of the renewal of the animal economy to its reproduction. Courtship and marriage, which, it is said, are conducted in the most unsentimental manner possible, are for that reason not to be discussed; and for obvious reasons many of the prenatal conditions cannot here be dwelt upon. Having never witnessed the act of parturition in an Eskimo my knowledge of the subject is merely second-hand, and consequently not worth detailing. It appears, though, that parturition is a function easily performed among them, and that it is unattended by the post-partum accidents common to civilization. As a rule the women are unprolific, it being uncommon to find a family numbering over three children, and the mortality among the new-born is excessive, owing to the ignorance and neglect of the ordinary rules of hygiene. They seem, however, to be kind to their children, who in respect to crying do not show the same peevishness as seen in our nurseries; indeed, the social and demonstrative good nature of the race seems to crop out even in babyhood, as I have often witnessed under such circumstances as a baby enveloped in furs in a skin canoe which lay along side the ship during a snowstorm; its tiny hands protruding held a piece of blubber, which it sucked with apparent relish, the unique picture of happy contentment. It was quick to feel itself an object of attraction, and its chubby face returned any number of smiles of recognition.
The manner of carrying the infant is contrary to that of civilized custom. It is borne on the back under the clothes of the mother, which form a pouch, and from which its tiny head is generally visible over one or the other shoulder, but on being observed by strangers it shrinks like a snail or a marsupian into its snug retreat. When the mother wants to remove it she bends forward, at the same time passing her left hand up the back under her garments, and seizing the child by the feet, pulls it downward to the left; then, passing the right hand under the front of the dress, she again seizes the feet and extracts it by a kind of podalic delivery. Another common way of carrying children is astride the neck. The subject is one that the Chucki artist often carves in ivory.
The play impulse manifests itself among these people in various ways. They have such mimetic objects as dolls, miniature boats, etc. I have seen a group of boys, sailing toy boats in a pond, behave under the circumstances just as a similar group has been observed to do at Provincetown, Cape Cod, and the same act, as performed in the Frog Pond of the Boston Common, may be called only a differentiated form of the same tendency. Their dolls, of ivory and clothed with fur, seem to answer the same purpose that they do in civilized communities—namely, the amusement of little girls—for at one place where we landed a number of Eskimo girls, stopping play on our approach, sat their dolls up in a row, evidently with a view to giving the dolls a better look at the strange visitors. Spinning tops, essentially Eskimo and unique in their character, are held in the hand while spinning; on the Siberian coast football is played, and among other questionable things acquired from contact with the whalemen, a knowledge of card-playing exists. We were very often asked for cards, and at one place where we stopped and bartered a number of small articles with the natives they gave evidence of their aptitude at gaming. The game being started, with the bartered articles as stakes, one fellow soon scooped in everything, leaving the others to go off dead-broke, amid the ridicule of some of our crew, and doubtless feeling worse than dead, for among no people that I have seen, not even the French, does ridicule so effectually kill.