and
south and forgetting entirely to turn back to the land of the
anxiously-waiting Eskimo. The boys, by playing a cup-and-ball game,
help, too, to hasten its return. When the sun forgets you for six
months, you become fearful lest you have lost his loving care forever.
The spring is an anxious time in more ways than one, for if there is any
suffering from hunger it is felt now, when the winter supplies are
finished and the new hunts not yet begun. "I'll eat my hat" is an empty
threat in the south, but many an Eskimo kiddie has satisfied the gnawing
pains of spring hunger by chewing his little skin boots.

At the Mackenzie delta last year, Roxi the Eskimo came in and told me
this sad story. Six weeks before, a party of Eskimo had left Baillie
Island with dogs for Kopuk. On their way they found a dead whale and
cooked and ate of it; the next day they found another and again
indulged. After travelling twenty-five miles, the whole party was taken
violently ill, and six adults and two children died, leaving only one
little girl alive. There for three days and four nights she remained,
alone in the camp of the dead, until by the merest chance a young
Eskimo, attending his line of traps from Toker Point, stumbled into the
silent camp.

One can faintly glimpse at, but must utterly fail to grasp, what that
little girlie suffered mentally. We picture her sleeping, sobbing,
waiting in that snow-hut in the silences, surrounded by the still bodies
of every one she loved on earth. The sequel of the story is as sad as
its first chapter. The band of Eskimo to which the rescuer belonged went
in their turn and ate of this stranded whale, with the result that
A-von-tul and Ita-chi-uk, two youths of twenty or twenty-one, died, too,
and with them a little four-year-old girl. The drift whale must have
been poisoned either by ptomaine or by the remnants of the highly
compressed tonite, the explosive used by the whale-hunters.

[Illustration: An Eskimo Exhibit

A--Eskimo woman's head-dress of reindeer skin.

B--Skin of the baby seal, its shimmering whiteness used by the
missionaries to typify the Lamb of God, the word "Lamb" having no
meaning to an Eskimo.

C--Ornamental skin mat, the work of an Eskimo woman.

D--Quiver of arrows used by Eskimo boys.

E--Model of Eskimo paddle.

F--Skin model of the _Oomiak_ or Eskimo woman's boat.

G and H--Eskimo pipes of true Oriental type, the bowl holding only half
a thimbleful of tobacco.]