They certainly, in general, prefer eating their meat cooked, and, while they have fuel, they usually boil it; but this is a luxury, and not a necessary to them.  Oily as the nature of their principal food is, yet they commonly take an equal proportion of lean to their fat, and, unless very hungry, do not eat it otherwise.  Oil they seldom or never use in any way as a part of their general diet; and even our butter, of which they were fond, they would not eat without a due quantity of bread.[009] They do not like salt meat as well as fresh, and never use salt themselves; but ship’s pork or even a red herring did not come amiss to them.  Of pea-soup they would eat as much as the sailors could afford to give them; and that word was the only one, with the exception of our names, which many of them ever learned in English.  Among their own luxuries must be mentioned a rich soup called k=ay~o, made of blood, gravy, and water, and eaten quite hot.

Their only drink is water; and of this, when they can procure it, they swallow an inconceivable quantity; so that one of the principal occupations of the women during the winter is the thawing of snow in the ootkooseeks for this purpose.  They cut it into thin slices, and are careful to have it clean, on which account they will bring it from a distance of fifty yards from the huts.  They have an extreme dislike to drinking water much above the temperature of 32 deg.  In eating their meals, the mistress of the family, having previously cooked the meat, takes a large lump out of the pot with her fingers, and hands it to her husband, who, placing a part of it between his teeth, cuts it off with a large knife in that position, and then passes the knife and meat together to his next neighbour.  In cutting off a mouthful of meat, the knife passes so close to their lips, that nothing but constant habit could ensure them from the danger of the most terrible gashes; and it would make an English mother shudder to see the manner in which children five or six years old are at all times freely trusted with a knife to be used in this way.

The length of one of the best of seven canoes belonging to these Esquimaux was twenty-five feet, including a narrow-pointed projection, three feet long at each end, which turns a little upward from the horizontal.  The extreme breadth, which is just before the circular hole, was twenty-one inches, and the depth ten inches and a half.  The plane of the upper surface of the canoe, except in the two extreme projections, bends downward a little from the centre towards the head and stern, giving it the appearance of what in ships is called “broken-backed.”  The gunwales are of fir, in some instances of one piece, three or four inches broad in the centre, and tapering gradually away towards the ends.  The timbers, as well as the fore-and-aft connecting pieces, are of the same material, the former being an inch square, and sometimes so close together as to require between