feathers before his mother takes him pick-a-back, or else he is
wrapped in a robe of rabbit-skin. So we see that it was an Eskimo mother
who first crooned in love and literalness,

"By-o, Baby Bunting,
Daddy's gone a-hunting,
To get a little rabbit-skin,
To wrap his Baby Bunting in."

Mother-love is a platform upon which even ancestral enemies can meet.
While I sat cross-legged (and, like cotton, absorbent) last summer
enjoying the hospitality of the Oo-vai-oo-aks, to us entered a
beautiful-faced Loucheux Indian mother with a pair of twins
pendant,--rollicking chaps. The younger Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak dropped on the
floor her lord's boot which she had been dutifully biting into shape and
jumped up to greet her visitor. There was no mistaking that smile of
hospitality. Snatching from the visitor one of her baby boys, the young
hostess kissed and cried out to it with an abandon of maternal joy, the
culminating point of which was feeding it from her own breast. Thus, in
one instance at least, has the ancient feud of Loucheux and Eskimo died.

A baby Eskimo is nursed until it is two years old or older, and learns
to smoke and to walk about the same time. The family pipe is laid upon
the couch, and papa, mamma, and the children take a solacing whiff as
the spirit moves them. These pipes are identical with those used by the
Chinese, and hold but half a thimbleful of tobacco, the smoke being
inhaled and swallowed with dreamy joy.

The hardihood of Eskimo children is scarcely believable. It is not
unusual for children of six years to trudge uncomplainingly for
twenty-five miles by the side of their elders; and we came to know a
little seven-year old chap who was quite a duck-hunter, and who went out
every day alone and seldom came back without at least two brace. At
eleven years, with his watertight boots, spear in hand, and coil of line
on his back, he takes up the Innuit man's burden, and does it with an
air both determined and debonair. If you ask a mother if she does not
think this a somewhat tender age for her boy to essay to keep up with
the men on the hunt, she merely smiles as she sews her waterproof seam,
and says, "The First Innuits [Eskimo] did so."

These fur-clad philosophers are perhaps seen at their best in their
play, for there is always harmony in the crystal nursery of the North,
as these little people have no bad names nor threatening terms in their
vocabulary Yet the play is often very rough, and your Eski