[Contents]CHAPTER IVCHAPTER IVALONG THE GREENLAND COASTWe hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for specimens.On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy and full of fish and seal bones.When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends, Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a[39]flip as he was trying to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over the gunwale.One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they liked them all very much,[40]especially a picture showing lions playing with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion. There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard. For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins. And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them, even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco.[41]Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for all of one’s friends at home.The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly love to dance.We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy, etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors always go well.At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark. After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of tipsy and can hardly walk.Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing[42]me how to skin birds. It is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out. Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a little beyond the eyes. Then[43]the head is scraped and a knife is put between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time, for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and hunting. When we went[44]ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored away in a big storehouse.Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and rifles tied down with thongs.At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty much the same as Danish.We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a[45]small red building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland. The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it in.The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn. When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out it takes a long time and is really hard work.In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached there about seven. It was a very small harbor so theMorrisseycould not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at the little wharf.At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied up with ropes[46]and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six feet.While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor, even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder. And naturally they have very small feet.[47]At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain, because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food, and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them something really helpful in exchange for important things. For instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and useful thing[48]we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot everywhere, while we on board always drank it.[49]
[Contents]CHAPTER IVCHAPTER IVALONG THE GREENLAND COASTWe hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for specimens.On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy and full of fish and seal bones.When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends, Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a[39]flip as he was trying to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over the gunwale.One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they liked them all very much,[40]especially a picture showing lions playing with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion. There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard. For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins. And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them, even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco.[41]Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for all of one’s friends at home.The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly love to dance.We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy, etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors always go well.At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark. After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of tipsy and can hardly walk.Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing[42]me how to skin birds. It is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out. Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a little beyond the eyes. Then[43]the head is scraped and a knife is put between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time, for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and hunting. When we went[44]ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored away in a big storehouse.Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and rifles tied down with thongs.At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty much the same as Danish.We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a[45]small red building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland. The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it in.The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn. When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out it takes a long time and is really hard work.In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached there about seven. It was a very small harbor so theMorrisseycould not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at the little wharf.At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied up with ropes[46]and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six feet.While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor, even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder. And naturally they have very small feet.[47]At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain, because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food, and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them something really helpful in exchange for important things. For instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and useful thing[48]we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot everywhere, while we on board always drank it.[49]
CHAPTER IVCHAPTER IVALONG THE GREENLAND COAST
CHAPTER IV
We hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for specimens.On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy and full of fish and seal bones.When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends, Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a[39]flip as he was trying to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over the gunwale.One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they liked them all very much,[40]especially a picture showing lions playing with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion. There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard. For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins. And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them, even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco.[41]Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for all of one’s friends at home.The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly love to dance.We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy, etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors always go well.At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark. After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of tipsy and can hardly walk.Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing[42]me how to skin birds. It is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out. Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a little beyond the eyes. Then[43]the head is scraped and a knife is put between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time, for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and hunting. When we went[44]ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored away in a big storehouse.Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and rifles tied down with thongs.At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty much the same as Danish.We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a[45]small red building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland. The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it in.The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn. When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out it takes a long time and is really hard work.In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached there about seven. It was a very small harbor so theMorrisseycould not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at the little wharf.At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied up with ropes[46]and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six feet.While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor, even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder. And naturally they have very small feet.[47]At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain, because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food, and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them something really helpful in exchange for important things. For instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and useful thing[48]we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot everywhere, while we on board always drank it.[49]
We hit bad weather going north to Disko and had to go in for shelter behind some small islands about forty miles from Holsteinsborg. There were no people there. We caught a few fish and shot some birds for specimens.
On one island there were three deserted sod huts. They were all muddy and full of fish and seal bones.
When we came back from the huts I went fishing with two of my friends, Jim and Ralph. We went away outside in the dory where it was quite rough—at least I thought so. We caught a few rock cod. Jim had a great big halibut right alongside but the fish gave a[39]flip as he was trying to land him and got free from the hook just as he was hauling him over the gunwale.
One night when some Eskimos came on board along the coast we showed them movies of Eskimos harpooning walrus to see how it would strike them. These movies were given in our little mid-ships cabin, where we eat and most of us sleep, with our Pathex projector thrown on a small screen Fred made from the table oilcloth.
When the harpooned walrus pulled the Eskimo hunter, our guests shouted and grunted. It was very funny. They had heard of movies but had never seen any. After the northern pictures we showed some from the South Sea islands. The Eskimos had never seen people in swimming so they didn’t know quite what to make of it. When they were asked by a friend of ours who speaks Eskimo what they thought of it, they only said that they liked them all very much,[40]especially a picture showing lions playing with an animal trainer. They had never seen any animal like a lion. There isn’t a cat, for instance, in all Greenland, we were told.
It is great fun to see the boats come out and meet you and the Eskimos that are entirely different from us and can’t speak a word of English except for words like shirts or sugar or coffee that they have heard. For such things as these they want to trade boots and purses and skins. And in the south they make little kayaks and knives and pen holders and such things out of the ivory of walrus tusks.
They have some very nice hats made of fur and eiderdown. One man brought two little toy kayaks up to me with all the equipment on them, even the little rack to hold the harpooning line, with a tiny model of a man sitting in the kayak. I got one of these for my little museum at home. For this one he wanted an old pair of pants, or some tobacco.[41]Even the women want chewing tobacco. I got some very pretty purses made of seal flippers, with bone latches. It is hard to find trinkets for all of one’s friends at home.
The Eskimos on the whole are very nice and honest. Most of them can play the accordion, and they seem to be very musical and they certainly love to dance.
We have lots of things on board for gifts and trading, especially to give in return for help and labor. Money isn’t much good up here. Our stores include axes, knives, beads, needles, tobacco, pipes, candy, etc. Both men and women love gay colored cloths and small mirrors always go well.
At one of the villages we saw a lot of dogs eating a decayed shark. After the shark has been dead for a few weeks ammonia seems to form in the meat. The dogs love it and after eating it they seem to get sort of tipsy and can hardly walk.
Fred Linekiller, the taxidermist, is showing[42]me how to skin birds. It is very interesting to do it. The first thing to do when you shoot a bird is to put cotton in the wounds and in the mouth so the blood will not run out on the feathers. After that a needle is put through the nostrils and the beak is sewed together, so the cotton won’t come out. Then the feathers on the breast are parted and the skin cut from the breast bone down to the soft part of the stomach.
Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.
Looking Down Over a Bird Rookery.
Next cornmeal is poured in. It is used to keep the skin dry and to mop up the blood and moisture. After that is done instead of pulling the skin, it is pushed, so as not to stretch it. More cornmeal is added as the skin is pushed off. When the legs are reached they are cut at the knee joint so as to keep the bone to hold the foot in place. Just above where the tail feathers end is cut and the skin turned inside out and the skin pushed gently toward the head. It can be pushed as far up as a little beyond the eyes. Then[43]the head is scraped and a knife is put between the jaw bone and the back of the head opening up the head so that you get the brains out. Then the skin, inside out, is treated with arsenic powder, and after that it is put right side out again and the feathers fluffed out. Then it is ready to be taken back to the Museum to be stuffed and mounted, or studied as it is.
Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.
Nils, David and Matak, Son of Pooadloona.
When I woke up one morning I found that we were in a little but very good harbor, Godhavn on Disko Island. Cap’n Bob has to be up most of the time, especially, of course, when we are moving about. This time, for instance, he was on deck all night, and Dad was with him. Disko is a hard place to get into unless you know it awfully well.
There is a little coal mine near Godhavn. Getting the coal, and fishing, is about all they do, with some hunting especially in the winter. The women do most of the work and the men go fishing and hunting. When we went[44]ashore we saw the women with big baskets of coal unloading a small boat and taking the coal to be weighed and stored away in a big storehouse.
Carl, Mr. Streeter, Art Young and I went shark fishing with two Eskimos out in the mouth of the bay. We fished from about one until four o’clock but didn’t catch a thing. Later we traded some very nice little toy kayaks, all equipped, and also some little sledges with whips and rifles tied down with thongs.
At Godhavn we went all around with the Governor, Carl acting as our interpreter. It is fine having him along as he speaks pretty good Danish. He is an American, but his people are both Norwegian and in his home out in Minnesota they talked Norwegian a lot, and it is pretty much the same as Danish.
We went into the printing office where the only paper in Greenland is published. It is a monthly paper, and the printing house is a[45]small red building with one little press. About three thousand papers in the Eskimo language go out free to practically all the people in Greenland. The Governor gave us a bound copy for our collection. Most of the stuff in the paper is written by Eskimos up and down the coast, who send it in.
The next morning about six-thirty we heaved anchor and left Godhavn. When the anchor comes up all hands are called to the windlass which works with iron bars like pump handles. If there is a lot of chain out it takes a long time and is really hard work.
In the afternoon Dad asked me to fill a little bag with trading stuff because we were going to stop at a village called Proven. We reached there about seven. It was a very small harbor so theMorrisseycould not go in, and we used our launch and were greeted by the whole town at the little wharf.
At the end of the dock were about eight sharks down in the water tied up with ropes[46]and still alive. Later Harry Raven got one for a specimen that was ten feet long. Later he found the liver measured nearly six feet.
While Dad and the others had tea with the Governor (all these little hamlets in the south have a Dane in charge whom we call a Governor, even though the average population may be only forty people) I went out to trade for some kamaks or skin boot. These are a sort of double high shoe or boot made of seal skin with the hair turned in and with a hairy inner boot beneath which is put in grass to make it soft and warmer.
The Greenland hair seal is entirely different from the Alaskan fur seal. It has no fur but just coarse hair and has no value except for oil and its hide. I had a chance to get several pairs of kamaks but they were all only about half the size of my foot. The Eskimos are very small people and mostly the tallest only come up to about my shoulder. And naturally they have very small feet.[47]
At Proven I got two pairs of seal skin pants, one for a jacket and the other in exchange for a box of candy and a sweater. I also got a kind of necklace which is worn by the women for “dress up,” for a piece of soap, a bar of chocolate and an army mirror, which was a good bargain, because the necklaces are hard to make and hard to get.
We were going to get a kayak but it would be mean to take one because the Eskimos are like children and would give away almost anything for candy or pretty materials. The kayak is their main way of getting food, and is to them dreadfully important. We always tried not to take anything which was very necessary to the Eskimo, and to give them something really helpful in exchange for important things. For instance, later when we got some kayaks, we gave in exchange lumber and materials from which they could make new ones. A very popular and useful thing[48]we had for gifts was Tetley’s tea put up in half pound tins. This, often with a small bag or tin of sugar, was liked a lot everywhere, while we on board always drank it.
[49]