[Illustration:  Useful Articles Made by the Eskimo

A—­Eskimo soapstone lamp which burns seal-oil.  The wick is of reindeer moss.

B—­Eskimo knife of Stone Age.

C—­Its modern successor, fashioned from part of a steel saw, with handle of ivory.  This is the knife used by the women; note how the old shape is retained.

D—­Eskimo Tam O’Shanter.  The band is of loonskins, the cap proper being carefully constructed from swans’ feet.  This admirably shows the cleverness of the Eskimo in adapting natural forms to economic use, each foot of the swan being a true sector of a circle.

E—­Old-time stone hatchet.

F and G—­Knives filed from saw-blades, with bone handles.

H—­Mortar for pulverising tobacco into snuff.

I—­Needle set in a wood handle, and by rapid rotary motion used to pierce ivory.]

Mr. John Firth, of the Hudson’s Bay Company here, gives us much information regarding these people who for thirty-seven consecutive years have traded with him.  The Kogmollycs have been here “from the beginning,” the Nunatalmutes moving into this region in 1889, driven out of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, by a scarcity of game.  The two tribes live in peace and intermarry.  The aged among them are respected.  Criminals and lunatics are quietly removed from the drama.  Supposed incurables commit suicide and in that act reach immediately a hot underground heaven.

Nature to these Eskimo is especially benign.  The junction of the Mackenzie and the Peel is covered with a forest of spruce, and even to the ocean-lip we trace foot-prints of moose and black bear.  In the delta are cross, red, and silver foxes, mink and marten, with lynx and rabbits according to the fortunes of war.  The Eskimo declare that, east of Cape Parry, bears are so numerous that from ten to twenty are seen at one time from a high hilltop.

The Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs, the man with the best stories and the most inimitable way of telling them, is Roxi.  It was Roxi who gave us the love story of his cousin the Nuntalmute Lochinvar.  This young man wooed a maid.  The girl’s father had no very good opinion of the lad’s hunting ability and was obdurate.  The lover determined to take destiny into his own hands.  A ravine of ice stretched between his igloo and that of the family to whom he would fain be son, and over the chasm a drift-log formed a temporary bridge.  Lothario, one night, crossed the icy gully, entered the igloo of his elect, seized her in her shin-ig-bee or sleeping-bag and lifted the dear burden over his back.  In spite of struggles and muffled cries from within, he strode off with her to his side of the stream.  The gulch safely crossed, he gaily kicked the log bridge into the gulf and bore his squirming treasure to his own igloo floor.  He had left his seal-oil lamp burning and now it was with an anticipative chuckle of joy that he untied the drawstring.  We end the story where Roxi did, by telling that the figure which rolled out sputtering from the shin-ig-bee was the would-not-be father-in-law instead of the would-be bride!