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The measurements were taken from my foot, which is not exactly a child's foot, with two pairs of reindeer-skin stockings on, and ten pairs were made. I well remember seeing these boots in civilized Christiania. They were exhibited in the bootmaker's windows I used to go a long way round to avoid coming face to face with these monsters in public.
To complete my outfit I added two large reindeer-skin bags, one larger, so that the smaller one could be put inside it without much difficulty. I was to sleep in these bags when obliged to rest out doors on the snow. One bag was sufficient in ordinary cold weather say 15 or 20 degrees below zero; the other I would use when the thermometer ranged from 25 to 40 or 50 degrees below zero.
Godfrey cut a slit with his pocket-knife in the reindeer-skin covering, and then Luka crawled out. He lay flat on his stomach and dragged himself along, looking, as Godfrey thought, in the twilight, just like the seals he had seen crawling over the rocks. He passed three of the yourts and then turned off.
Taking refuge abaft, a tall old man, with bald forehead and gray moustache, had lashed himself to a stanchion, by winding a piece of rope round his body, whilst he clasped in his arms, and held fast to his breast, two girls of fifteen or sixteen, half enveloped in a pelisse of reindeer-skin.
When the other horse recovered we harnessed our team and drove home." "And I," said another, "was once attacked when on foot. I wore a new pelisse of sheep-skin and a pair of reindeer-skin boots. Wolves are fond of deer and sheep, and they eat skin and all when they have a chance. The brutes stripped off my pelisse and boots without harming my skin.
On this day we used skin clothing for the first time reindeer-skin clothes of Eskimo cut but they proved to be too warm. We had the same experience later. In low temperatures these reindeer clothes are beyond comparison the best, but here in the South we did not as a rule have low temperatures on our sledge journeys.
And up there also sure enough was Seimke. She looked old and angular as she bent over the reindeer-skin that she was spreading out in the sunny weather. But she peeped beneath her arm as quick and nimble as a cat with kittens, and the sun shone upon her, and lit up her face and pitch-black hair. She leaped up so briskly, and shaded her eyes with her hand, and looked down at him.
The boulders that we had taken aboard for ballast had to be shifted continually in order to trim the boat and give access to the pump, which became choked with hairs from the moulting sleeping-bags and finneskoe. The four reindeer-skin sleeping-bags shed their hair freely owing to the continuous wetting, and soon became quite bald in appearance.
The inner one was of calf-skin or thin female reindeer-skin, and quite light; the outer one was of heavy buck reindeer-skin, and weighed about 13 pounds. Both were open at the end, like a sack, and were laced together round the neck. I have always found this pattern the easiest, simplest, most comfortable, and best. We recommend it to all. Novelties in the way of snow-goggles were many.
The damp spreads, like decay in wood, and continually attacks the surrounding skin, with the result that one fine day you find yourself with a hairless sleeping-bag. One cannot be too careful in the choice of skins. For the sake of economy, the makers of reindeer-skin sleeping-bags are in the habit of sewing them in such a way that the direction of the hair is towards the opening of the bag.
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