You often, therefore, find that water has
fallen upon the skin that makes your bed, and formed a great patch of
ice, which has to be beaten off with a wooden club.
Until experience has taught you it makes you shudder to think that soon
your naked body is to rest upon the place where now you see that patch
of ice. But continued pounding will remove every vestige of it without
disturbing the fur, if the weather is sufficiently cold. Therefore
exposure is the best treatment for bedding, though it certainly gives
the skins a degree of cold that can scarcely be appreciated until
experienced. It is astonishing, however, how soon the bed becomes warm
from the heat of the body. For, perhaps, from five to ten minutes you
may lie there and shiver, when gradually a genial warmth begins to
pervade the whole body, the shiver subsides, and you are as
comfortable, as far as cold is concerned, in bed in an igloo in the
Arctic, as you would be in a civilized mansion in the temperate zone.
The Esquimaux are not acquainted with the qualities of the magnetic
needle, and, it is needless to say, do not travel by the compass. Like
all savage tribes they have, however, methods for keeping their
direction while making long voyages. These are usually made on the
salt-water ice, and they follow the land; but when travelling over
land, either in summer or winter, they can generally distinguish north
from south, at least approximately.
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