It is
certain that to him, more than to all the other natives with us,
combined, is due the success of our enterprise.
When the weather was unpropitious for hunting, and we would be
without food, it was nothing more than the usual Inuit custom to say,
"Ma-muk-poo-now" ("No good"), and sit down to wait for the weather
to improve. But under such circumstances I have known our brave-hearted
Toolooah rise equal to the emergency and go out to hunt for game until
he found it. The others would perhaps go out and look around for a
short time, and if they saw no game would come in, while he would not
get in until nearly midnight, if, as was seldom the case, he came in
empty-handed. I remember one time when we were without food, and moving
into a portion of the country which we knew to be but thinly stocked
with game. The hunters all went out, though the weather was thick with
snow, and the only probability of seeing reindeer was that they might
stumble upon them unobserved by the accident of approaching them
against the wind. The others came in about noon, discouraged, having
seen no game. Toolooah, on the contrary, did not get in until about
five hours later; then he came in for the dogs, to bring in three
reindeer that he had killed a few miles north of the camp. He went out
in a south-westerly direction, and started to make a circuit of the
camp on a radius of about five miles.
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