re is a fine skin over it and
it looks like tallow or leaf lard. It is quite hard in my country, but
would melt down into what you would call whale oil in this country.
After the whale is cut up we would have a great feast and eat all we
could. Then, after taking the meat home, we would spend a long time
eating and sleeping.

It was only when the ice broke up and the people came together to hunt
that they met one another. All the rest of the time the families stay in
their own homes, and do not visit back and forth as your people do. The
only exceptions are, when a man needs meat, or blubber, or a flint, and
goes to borrow, or when a young man goes to steal his girl. There is no
buying and selling, and no trading. Any one can get what he needs by
asking for it, if it is in the village. The people try to treat each
other as brothers and sisters.

I will now explain a strange custom among our people. When a young man
gets to be about 25 years old he is full grown and is considered to be
of age. He then begins to think of beginning life for himself. It is a
risky thing in my country to get a wife. A young man has to steal his
girl out of her parents' snow-house and get her away into another. If he
is caught trying to do this the girl's parents turn right on him and
kill him. If he has not pluck enough to steal a girl for himself, he has
to live alone, and when he goes to sleep he crawls head first into a fur
sack. When he wants to get up he must crawl out backwards. I suppose he
is what you would call an old bachelor.

A young man, who sees a girl he thinks he would like to have for a wife,
makes a great many excuses to come to her father's snow-house. Sometimes
he wants to borrow a flint, or blubber, or something else. If he comes
without any excuse, the girl's parents tell him, "I know very well what
you do want; you want my girl, but you never shall get her." Then he
gets kind of scared and runs off. But he sneaks round again pretty
often. He thinks may be her parents will go out for a dog-sleigh ride,
or may be they would lay them down to sleep some time. If he does get
her out of the snow-house without being caught, the girl's parents send
right back for him and think nobody is any smarter than he is, and do
all they can for him.

The reason a girl's parents want the young man to steal her is, that
they want to find out whether he is willing to risk his life for his own
girl or not. They think if he is not smart e