United States or Malta ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The following morning MacVeigh started north. He reached the half-dozen igloos which made up the Eskimo village late the third day. Bye-Bye, the chief man, offered him no encouragement, MacVeigh gave him a pound of bacon, and in return for the magnificent present Bye-Bye told him that he had seen no white people.
It was pungent, salty. He noted a group of people gathered about some center of attraction whence issued a high-pitched intonation. "Oh, look at the cute little pea! Klondike croquet, the packer's pastime. Who'll risk a dollar to win a dollar? It's a healthy sport. It's good for young and old a cheeild can understand it. Three Eskimo igloos and an educated pill!" "A shell-game!"
In Koko's father's boat he placed Koko and his mother and the baby, Koolee and the twins, the pups, all three dogs, and four of the women who lived in the other igloos. So you see it was quite a large boat. In the Angakok's boat he placed his two wives, and all the rest of the women and children and dogs. The women took up the paddles. One end of the boat was partly in the water when they got in.
The entrance would usually be by a narrow passage-way, excavated from a snow-drift, six to eight feet below the surface, and perhaps twenty-five or thirty feet long. They had no fires for heating the igloos, and, consequently, there was a clammy, vault-like atmosphere indoors that was anything but pleasant.
The howl of occasional wolves was heard in the mountains; then all the bears disappeared, the hunger of the wolves was stilled. When the third moon rose not a thing stirred outside the igloos. A glacial silence gripped the northern world. In their shelters the natives clustered together, warming one another with their breathing and the heat of their bodies. They lacked the courage even to speak.
The Inuits at once attributed this unwonted energy on the part of the dogs to the fact that there were people not far distant, and, sure enough, we soon saw several igloos about three-quarters of a mile ahead, with poles sticking in the snow around them an evidence that they were inhabited. The sleds were now halted, and preparations made to open communication with the strangers.
The bay froze over far out from shore, and the white snow covered the igloos so completely that if it had not been for the windows, and for people moving about out of doors, no one could have told that there was any village there. The Last Day of all was so short that Menie and Monnie and Koko saw the whole of it from the top of the Big Rock!
There was a native village on this island where he hoped to find food and rest and, perhaps, some news of the Russian and Hanada. He located the village at last on a southern slope. This village, as he knew, consisted of igloos of rock. Only poles protruding from the rocks told him of its location. As he climbed the path to the slope he was surprised to be greeted only by women and children.
The chinks between them he filled compactly with soft snow, and the last block, introduced into the top of the structure, was formed exactly on the principle of the key-stone of an arch. When the large dome was finished, he commenced the smaller; and in the course of two hours both the houses or, as the Esquimaux call them, igloos were completed.
In their igloos, where single lamps smoked, they sat, and to keep up their circulation and to prevent themselves from falling into a coma, they rocked their bodies like things only half alive. The black days and black nights slowly, tediously, achingly passed. One day was like another one night seemed to mark no progress of time.
Word Of The Day