Phil and the missionary received an uproarious welcome, emphasized by a great firing of guns, at this quaint Eskimo village, and were conducted to the kashga, or principal building, which is at once town-hall, hotel, bath-house, and general assembly-room for the settlement, as well as the winter residence of all unmarried men.
So great was the heat in this place, so stifling its atmosphere, and so horrible its odors, that poor Phil gasped for breath on entering it. In vain did he attempt to partake of some of the delicacies pressed upon their guests by the hospitable natives. Raw seal’s liver, strips of reindeer fat, dried fish, salmon roe that had been kept for many weeks in a hole in the ground, and caribou bones split so that the marrow might be sucked from them, succeeded each other in rapid succession. Phil was hungry, but not hungry enough for any of these.
Nor could he force himself to remain in that terrible atmosphere long enough to witness the wedding of an Eskimo girl with a white man, a Russian ex-employé of the old fur company, which was the first duty the missionary was called upon to perform. The mortified lad was sorry to thus disappoint his kind-hearted and well-meaning entertainers; but there was no help for it. So with swimming head and uneasy stomach he made a break for the place of exit.
INDIAN GIRLS, ALASKA
[CHAPTER X]
A SAD ROMANCE OF THE WILDERNESS
From long familiarity with such interiors as that of the kashga, and by a powerful exercise of will, the missionary was able to remain long after poor Phil had taken his departure, and also to partake of several of the Eskimo dainties already mentioned. It was largely by thus conforming in a measure to the ways of the natives when with them that he had gained their confidence and acquired the popularity that paved the way for future usefulness. Still, it was with a great sigh of relief and an eager inhaling of fresh air that he finally emerged from that fetid atmosphere.
Phil in the meantime had been amusing himself by climbing the dome-like roofs of the houses, and obtaining such glimpses as he might of their interiors through the smoke-holes. He never gazed long though, for the vile odors issuing from those apertures always drove him away after a single glance below.