My Eskimo Friends (1924)

II December came in with calm, clear, frosty skies, raked at night by glorious auroras and lighted by day with floods of sunshine. The tiniest lakes were soon closed with emerald seals, then the larger in quick succession. The white rims of the harbour crept farther and farther out from shore, and along the sweeping arc of the sound itself a jagged ice edge sparkled in the sun. Within two weeks the Laddie had ceased swinging from her chains and the seal of winter was everywhere. When Christmas came we kept open house for Wetalltok and his throng and all the islanders who were camped near by. Salty Bill improvised a tree. Spruce boughs, which he had brought up from Moose for the purpose of making spruce beer, he lashed to a pole. The candles were footlong miners’ dips, and the decorations were brightly labelled fruit cans from the cook’s scrap pile. The presents were black plug tobacco and matches for the men and needles and combs and trade candy for the women and their flocks. While Bill acted Santa Claus, Wetalltok’s gramophone belched forth its rasping sounds. The lilt of “Tipperary” and of Harry Lauder’s songs was contagious, but the “ Preacher and the Bear,” with its monologue and the realistic growling from a supposed bear, was a knock-out. “Nanook! Nanook!” (the bear! the bear!) they ex 58