Page:The cruise of the Corwin.djvu/190

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THE CRUISE OF THE CORWIN

other, with parties of Chukchis who come from Siberia in umiaks, and with the few schooners that bring goods from San Francisco and from the Sandwich Islands. After trading they indulge in games of wrestling, playing ball, gambling, dancing, and drinking whiskey, if they can get it. Then they break up their camps and go to their widely scattered homes, some a month's journey or more up the Inland and down the Colville Rivers. They now have about one hundred and forty tents set in a row along the beach, their light kayaks in front of the tents in a neat row, each with paddles and spears that belong to it, and in front of these a row of large skin umiaks. They are a mixed, jolly multitude, wearing different ornaments, superb fur clothes, or shabby foreign articles; one sees long hair, short hair, or closely shaven; here is headgear of hats, caps, or cowls, and folk who go bareheaded; labrets, too, of every conceivable size, color, and material—glass, stone, beads, ivory, brass. They show good taste and ingenuity in the manufacture of pipes, weapons, knickknacks of a domestic kind, utensils, ornaments, boats, etc.

Though savage and sensual, they are by no means dull or apathetic like the sensual savages of civilization, who live only to eat and indulge the senses, for these Eskimos, without