It falls to the lot of the woman, too, to do her share of boat-making.  The men deftly fashion the frames of kayak and oomiak, using in their construction not a single nail or piece of iron, but fastening the wood together by pegs and thongs of skin.  Then the women come on the scene, measure the frame, and sew green hides of the proper shape to fit, making wonderful overlapping seams that are absolutely watertight.  As it is necessary to put the skin covering on while the hides are raw, the whole job has to be completed at one sitting.  So a bee is held of the women of the communal camp.

[Illustration:  Cribbage-boards of Walrus Tusks

The scenes etched in the larger represent the events of one year of the carver.]

Where did the Eskimo get his versatile ability?  Only the walrus knows.  The whalers have inducted the Eskimo into the art of making cribbage-boards.  They use for each board a complete tusk of walrus-ivory, covering the whole with a wealth of descriptive carvings illustrative of all that comes into the yearly round of an Eskimo’s life,—­ice-fishing, bear-hunting, walrus-sticking.  So far as we could find out, the Husky’s connection with cribbage ceased with his making these edition de luxe boards.  He seemed himself to have gathered no inkling of the fine points of that game which one instinctively associates with Dick Swiveller as tutor and as pupil the little Marchioness, “that very extraordinary person, surrounded by mysteries, ignorant of the taste of beer, and taking a limited view of society through the key-holes of doors.”  In the world outside, far from igloos and ice-floes, where people gather round cheery Christmas fires with “one for his nob,” “two for his heels,” and “a double run of three,” these ivory crib-boards are sold for from seventy-five to one hundred dollars each.  We have two among our most treasured trophies, and with them an ivory ring beautifully formed which we saw made.  Set in the ring is a blue stone of irregular shape which was fitted into its ivory niche with a nicety of workmanship that few jewellers could attain.  I had fashioned for me also a gavel in the shape of a sleeping seal, made of fossil ivory from the Little Diomedes.  The contrast of the weathered brown of the outside of the ivory with the pure white of the inner layers, when worked up into a carved design, gives the effect of cameo and intaglio combined.

We tasted many new Eskimo dishes.  When, on our return, we confessed that the brain of the seal served here is a delicious dish, we ran against the sensibilities of refined natures.  But why is it cruder to enjoy seal’s brains a la vinaigrette, than to tickle our taste with brains of the frolicking calf?  The seal furnished a more equivocal dinner than this, nothing less than entrails au naturel, which our hostess draws through her fingers yard by yard in pure anticipative delight, each guest being presented with two or three feet of the ribbon-like piece de resistance.  The scene that jumps to our memory as we watch this feast of fat things is connected with food-manipulations in Chicago.  It was down at Armour’s in the stockyards that we had seen Polacks and Scandinavian girls preparing in the succulent sausage a comestible that bore strange family semblance to that which our friends are now eating before us, this linked sweetness long drawn out.