Читать книгу Animal Stories from Eskimo Land. Adapted from the Original Eskimo Stories Collected by Dr. Daniel S. Neuman онлайн

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“Very well, to Eskimo Land we shall go. I will take you inside a “kasga” and let the Eskimos tell you their own stories; but before we go there I must explain to you that in every Eskimo village there is one house called a “kasga.” Now this kasga is the place where they all go to pass the long, dark hours of winter, with song and story. Sometimes they dance to the weird music of beating drums and chanting voices, and again, they sit quietly mending their weapons, their fishnets or spears; or again, some of them will be carving beautiful pieces of ivory taken from a walrus tusk.

“The house called ‘kasga’ in which they meet is built by all the people of the village. Every one lends a hand; even the little children do their share of the work. There are logs of driftwood to be hauled: there is turf or moss from the tundra to be put over the round roof, and digging to be done with the big bone shovels. So they all help to build the place in which they spend so much of their time. The men gather there when they get home from hunting. They cannot be out long in winter. It is dark most of the day as well as the night, and the storms are so bad they do not dare to go very far away. The women bring their sewing too, which they do with thread made from dried sinews from the leg of the caribou or from the white whale which the old women patiently pull apart into long threads.