Title: The American Museum journal
Identifier: americanmuseumjo18amer (find matches)
Year: c1900-(1918) (c190s)
Authors: American Museum of Natural History
Subjects: Natural history
Publisher: New York : American Museum of Natural History
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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162 THE AMKlllLA^ ML\<EL'M JOinXAL Hunger, suffering, and privations of the past winter are forgotten, as trying fineers work the sealskin thonii:s into nets and old harpoon handles into poles. Arh-pood-e-arh-suit! Ark-pood- e-ark-suit!" (Little auks ! little auks !) is heard from tupik to tupik. Pets, pups, and cripples among the dogs (the good dogs are away with their masters) strain at their traces in an endeavor to haul a sledfje load of shouting women and laiighing children to the bird cliffs a mile away. Here are the birds in countless numl)ers. The talus slope is literally covered, and the air is filled, the birds reseml)ling at a distance noth- ing so much as a gigantic swarm of mosquitoes. The women take their positions in holes among the rocks which have been used for centuries. As flock after flock wheels past within reach, the long dip net sweeps across the path, catching from one to ten birds at a sweep. ^lany of these birds are eaten raw upon the spot, some are cached under the rocks for the following winter, others are placed in sealskin bags and taken to the tents to be boiled, each person eating about eight birds. The skins are sucked thoroughly to remove the fat, then dried, and used in the manufact\ire of birdskin shirts. The ('gg< of this bird and those of the eider duck are delicacies with these northern people. I have often been one in a party that gathered six thoitsand eggs in a few hours. Strange to say, these eggs i-emain fresh for a year if left under the rocks out of the direct rays of the sun. Chilled during the summer, they are frozen hard in Sep- tember and during the following months. The Eskimos eat manv of
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This is Borup Lodge, headquarters of the Crocker Land Expedition at Etah. North CTreenland, as seen in early spring from the hill above. The house is one of the warmest buildings ever constructed in the Xorth, the walls being double with a four-inch air space. It contains a large living room, four sleeping rooms, a work room, an electrical room, and a photographic dark room

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