n great discomfort, if
they could exist at all.

The Eskimos cut the walrus' thick hide into long lines with which they
hunt--as we have seen. They do not cut these lines in strips and join
them in many places; but, beginning at one end of the skin, they cut
round and round without break to the centre, and thus secure a line of
many fathoms in length.

It is truly said that "necessity is the mother of invention." These
natives have no wood. Not a single tree grows in the whole land of
which I am writing. There are plenty of plants, grasses, mosses, and
beautiful flowers in summer--growing, too, close beside ice-fields that
remain unmelted all the year round. But there is not a tree large
enough to make a harpoon of. Consequently the Eskimos are obliged to
make sledges of bones; and as the bones and tusks of the walrus are not
big enough for this purpose, they tie and piece them together in a
remarkably neat and ingenious manner.

Sometimes, indeed, they find pieces of drift-wood in the sea. Wrecks of
whale-ships, too, are occasionally found by the natives in the south of
Greenland. A few pieces of the precious wood obtained in this way are
exchanged from one tribe to another, and so find their way north. But
the further north we go the fewer pieces of this kind of wood do we
find; and in the far north, where our adventurous voyagers were now
ice-bound, the Eskimos have very little wood, indeed.

Food is the chief object which the Eskimo has in view when he goes out
to do battle with the walrus. Its flesh is somewhat coarse, no doubt,
but it is excellent, nourishing food notwithstanding, and although a
well-fed Englishman might turn up his nose at it, many starving
Englishmen have smacked their lips over walrus-beef in days gone by--
aye, and have eaten it raw, too, with much delight!

Let not my reader doubt the truth of this. Well-known and truth-loving
men have dwelt for a time in those regions, and some of these have said
that they actually came to _prefer_ the walrus flesh raw, because it was
more strengthening, and fitted them better for undertaking long and
trying journeys in extremely cold weather. One of the most gallant men
who ever went to the Polar seas, (Dr Kane, of the American navy), tells
us, in his delightful book, "Arctic Explorations", that he frequently
ate raw flesh and liked it, and that the Eskimos often eat it raw. In
fact, they are not particular. They will eat it cooked or raw