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Updated: June 21, 2025
Here the wind was variable, sometimes north-east, east-north-east, and east by north; but we imagined ourselves to be 16 or 17 leagues off from the shore. The 15th we had reasonably clear weather. The 16th we came to an anchor about four or five of the clock in the afternoon. The people came presently to us, after the old manner, with crying "Il y a oute," and showed us seal-skins.
But it does increase your respect for them to see with what cheerfulness these women apply themselves to their exceedingly disagreeable labor. Seal-skins for making coats and trousers are dressed with the hair on, the fleshy membranes, or "mum'-me," being cut off with an oodloo before they are washed, stretched, and dried.
She had given up her bed to Lady Carse, and when Rollo was at home, slept on the floor, on some ashes covered with a blanket; the only materials for a bed which she had been able to command, as Rollo had been too busy to get seal-skins, or go to any distance for heather while it was soft.
Their teeth are short, thick, and close, generally regular, and in the young persons almost always white. The elderly women were still well furnished in this way, though their teeth were usually a good deal worn down, probably by the habit of chewing the seal-skins for making boots. In the young of both sexes the complexion is clear and transparent, and the skin smooth.
I now made a strong framework, tolerably sharp at each end, and as nearly as possible resembling a keel at the bottom. I covered this on both sides with pieces of strong cloth saturated with grease from the carcases of birds, and then covered the whole with well-dried seal-skins, which I had made impervious to wet.
My "larigans," which had long ago ceased to have any waterproof qualities, were now exchanged for the seal-skins, and thus fortified I stepped out into the slippery mud. So with a paddle as staff in one hand and Mr. Ford supporting me by the other, I completed my journey to the post. At the foot of the hill below the house, Mrs. Ford stood waiting.
There was a crash, a momentary glimpse of falling ice and splitting walls, and the next moment the noble steamer came at half speed across the open water, just as the little boat shot out of the sheltering lead. In his hands La Salle waved the banner attached to the boat-hook, which had marked the deserted heaps of seal-skins.
He had chosen a pleasant valley for his residence, about half a mile from the coast, where he had erected a very convenient hut, well lined with seal-skins, and had a bed of the same, raised about two feet above the ground.
Catharine tells many trifling, but interesting incidents, of various nature, in these Memoirs: of how, after the birth of her first child, she was left utterly alone and neglected, so that she famished with thirst for the lack of some one to bring her water; how her child was taken from her at its birth, and kept from her, she hardly being allowed even to see it; how it was always wrapped in fox-skins and seal-skins, till it lay in a continual bath of perspiration; how the members of the royal family itself were so badly accommodated, that sometimes they were made ill by walking through passages open to wind and rain, and sometimes stifled by over-crowded rooms; how at the imperial masquerades, during one season, the men were ordered to appear in women's dresses, and the women in the propria quae maribus, the former hideous in large whaleboned petticoats and high feathered head-dresses, the latter looking like scrubby little boys with very thick legs, and all that the Empress Elizabeth might show her tall and graceful figure and what beautiful things she used to walk with, which Catharine says were the handsomest that she ever saw; how in this court, where marriage was the mere shadow of a bond, it was yet deemed a matter of the first nuptial importance that a lady of the court should have her head dressed for the wedding by the hands of the Empress herself, or, if she were too ill, by those of the Grand Duchess; how Catharine used, at Oranienbaum, to dress herself from head to foot in male attire, and go out in a skiff, accompanied only by an old huntsman, to shoot ducks and snipe, sometimes doubling the Cape of Oranienbaum, which extends two versts into the sea, and how thus the fortunes of the Russian Empire, during the latter half of the eighteenth century, were at the mercy of a spring-tide, a gust of wind, or the tipping of a shallop.
Then came a few moments of great bustle and confusion, and an accumulation of seal-skins and brocaded silks was ushered into the drawing-room of Mr. Rayne's house. It was reception day for Aunt Jean and Honor, and both were looking remarkably well in their most becoming costumes, amid their rich surroundings.
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