eaten boiled, as for instance all birds, brains and intestines of various animals as well as mussels. Neither brains nor intestines have much taste but still are favourite dishes. The cooking pots are four-sided soapstone vessels, slightly wider at the top than at the bottom. In contrast to the common Eskimo cooking pots, which are intended to hang over the lamp, the Caribou Eskimos' cooking pots are fashioned to stand over a fire, i. e. on each of the short sides they have a lug so that they may be lifted off the fire, but no holes for hanging them up. Enamel vessels are always used now, but from a grave at Baker Lake there is a cooking pot [utkuhik] of grey soapstone (P 28: 126; fig. 42). The long sides are slightly convex and diverging towards the top, the Image missingFig. 42.Soapstone cooking pot. short sides straight and each furnished with a square, projecting lug. One long side is broken and pierced in two places. This has been done after use, as there is no sign of repair; but whether it has been done accidentally or purposely before the pot was placed at the grave, cannot be determined. Measurements at the top 32.5 by 21 cm; height at the middle of the long sides 10.3 cm, at the short sides 8 cm. Thickness 1.3 cm. Menstruating women must always cook for themselves in their own cooking pot.
Caribou meat is boiled in fresh water; but for meat of sea mammals, sea water is used diluted with fresh water. This it not owing to any taboo, however, but is simply a matter of taste. Nor is there any prohibition against cooking the meat of sea mammals over heather or caribou meat over drift wood. The meat is cut into suitable pieces, and as many are put into the pot together that about half of each piece is above the water. When they are partly cooked they are turned; but they are only cooked so much that they retain the juice and, as a rule, are quite red inside. When frozen meat is cooked, the outside is quite cooked when the inside has only just been thawed. Caribou hooves are cooked with the skin on — and an abundance of dirt and excrement — so that the soup is uneatable to a European palate; the hooves themselves, however, taste almost like pig's trotters. It is the custom to boil the fat from them and the clean-gnawed bones. This
