Читать книгу The White Czar. A Story of a Polar Bear онлайн

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What light there is comes in through a window made of seal membrane. The sleeping bench usually occupies the side of the room opposite the entrance. This is covered with musk ox robes on which the hair is a foot in length. These robes together with many kinds of furs and skins insure a warm bed. This bed and the lamp are about the only furniture in the room. The lamp is a stone bowl from six to fifteen inches in diameter which is filled with seal oil. It is called Nan-uh. A moss wick is laid along one of the sloping sides of the bowl. The flame is white and, if properly tended, the light is even and fairly bright. All the cooking that the family do is done on this lamp and this accounts for the fact that the Eskimo eats most of his food raw.

The floor of the Eskimo house is strewn with pieces of raw meat, skins, garments and sometimes hunting utensils, although these are usually hung on the walls.

The families are large, consisting of eight and ten children, but the great mortality among the children keeps their numbers down. The adults also succumb easily to contagious diseases and die off like flies. That is why the entire Eskimo population of both North America and Asia is probably not more than forty thousand souls.