skin, with the down inside. Their polar bear skin jumpers had hoods. Their high boots were of reindeer skin. Es-qui-mo children were as warm and brown and greasy as buttered toast.
The children showed the white visitors the way into the house. They stooped at the low hole and slid down a toboggan tunnel. They climbed into the middle of the house through a cellar door in the floor. This was a clever way to let people in and keep the wind out, wasn't it? The house was built in a pit, of drift wood. Wrecked ships and uprooted trees floated to them from far-away lands. The frame work was covered with sod and moss. Snow fell thick on the house and froze solid.
An Es-qui-mo house had no windows, not even a hole for the smoke to go out. A bench around the wall made a table, a bed, and seats for just as many men, women, babies and dogs as could crowd into the hut. They could hardly see each other for the smoke. The hut was warmed and lighted by earthen lamps that hung from the ceiling. These had moss wicks and burned walrus fat. Over the lamps meat was cooked in earthen pots.
Ice-bound sailors often had to live with the Es-qui-mos all winter. They went hunting with the men. The stout dogs pulled the hunters on sleds made of animal bones. They killed seal and walrus and bears, with long spears called harpoons. It was not as dark as you would think. The stars and moon shone on a white, frozen world. Sometimes there were lights brighter than our sunsets; more wonderful than Fourth of July fire-works. They played all around the midnight sky in colored flames. They formed columns and crowns, curtains and banners. Ask mama to turn back to Volume I, page 140, and read to you about the Aurora Borealis.
When the sun came back and the ice broke up, the whalers went home with a ship load of oil in barrels. Their friends thought they were lost in the icy seas. When they were old men they sat in the bright light of whale-oil lamps and told stories of their adventures. The white children never grew tired of hearing about Agh-a-ni-to and Ny-ack, who lived in a snow house and dressed like polar bears. See Eskimo, page 626.
