About half-past ten o'clock that night, while we were eating some boiled walrus meat and entrails (about the fifth meal since four o'clock on the afternoon, when the meat arrived), some one came to the entrance of the igloo and handed in Toolooah's walrus line, saying Joe and Blucher had found the walrus dead upon the ice near where it was struck, the animal having crawled out and died after the hunters had left. Now for the first time Toolooah's face brightened up, and he was so impatient to hear the circumstances of the recovery of the lost game that, late as it was, he went to Joe's igloo to inquire. He soon returned with an exceedingly woebegone expression, for which I failed to elicit an explanation until the morning, when I found out from Joe that, according to the laws and customs of the Inuits the walrus belonged to him because he found it.
"What interest has Toolooah in it?" said I.
"None," was Joe's reply. "All over here country same way. Man he strikee walrus; let he go again; somebody else findee; he walrus."
"Well, Joe, suppose the somebody else lets the walrus go, how is it then?"
"All same way."
"So Toolooah has no interest in that walrus he killed and that you let go again?"
"Yes, all same way here country. But I give'm back he line last night.
Line my, all same; I findee."
"That was certainly noble in you, Joe, I am sure."
"Oh, yes; Toolooah my friend."
And so, I noticed, always was the case whenever there was any doubt about a point; "custom here country" always managed to give Joe the best of it, and I came to the conclusion that he had become pretty thoroughly civilized during his residence in the United States.