Читать книгу Little Folks of North America - Mary Hazelton Blanchard Wade - Страница 17

Table of Contents

The boats of the Eskimos are called kayaks and are like no others in the world. The boys take many lessons before they can be trusted to help in making a kayak. It is long and narrow and has room for only one person. Its frame is of bone or wood and it is pointed at both ends. When it is finished, the boat-maker stretches over it a seal skin which his wife has tanned. It is an excellent covering, for the water cannot pass through it. In the middle of the top the man leaves an opening as large as his body is round. He steps inside and sits down, stretching his legs in front of him. Yes, the opening is of the right size; the water of the wildest sea cannot enter and sink the boat when once the Eskimo has fitted the rim around the bottom of his coat over the rim he has made about the opening in the skin covering. With his stout paddle he will dare to travel for miles over the rough sea.

The short summer-time is one long day, for the sun does not set. The children go to bed when they are tired and sleepy and get up when they please. They feast to their hearts’ content during this time, for there are usually fish and birds and eggs in plenty. Then, too, these children of the north go berrying and bring home many a dish of delicious black crow-berries.

The greatest dainty of all is the paunch of a reindeer’s stomach. It consists of the moss and shrubs the animal has eaten, and is a little acid. It is no wonder then that the Eskimos are fond of it, as they have neither bread nor vegetables, and no fruit except the berries they are able to pick during a few weeks out of each year.