Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/106

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NOVEL SCENE.
87

may say—that is, a-bed. Of course, like all Innuits when in bed, she was entirely nude; but she immediately rose on her elbows, and proceeded to bite off pieces of blubber, chewing them, sucking the oil out, then spirting it into a little cone-like dish, made by inverting the bottom of my broken tin lamp

INNUIT MONUMENT AT TOONG-WINE—JONES'S CAPE.

In this way she obtained with her dental "mill," in less than two minutes, oil enough to fill two large-sized lamps. Koodloo and Kooperneung were standing up in the tupic at the time, I was seated with Akchukerzhun at my right, on tuktoo, by Suzhi's head, waiting for my lamp, while Koojesse and his partner, Tunukderlien, were at my left, wrapped in Innuit slumbers. It was a novel scene, that of Koo-ou-le-arng's operations in grinding blubber for oil; in particular, the incidental exhibition of what Burns describes as

"Twa drifted heaps, sae fair to see,"

exaggerated in size, as is the case with most Innuit women, struck me forcibly. The whole scene, though so strange to me,