Affairs were getting desperate now. In the last five days
we had but one meal a day, composed at first of about a quarter of a
pound of walrus or seal meat, but lately of "kow"--that is, the thick
hide of the walrus, with a thin cover of short hair on it, such as is
seen on the old fashioned seal-skin trunks. As the hunters got nothing,
we were without even our "kow" the next day, with the prospect of
remaining without food until Eeglee-leock and Nanook got back from
Marble Island, where they went for relief from the natives there three
days ago. Lieutenant Schwatka went with them in order to try to get
some food for us from the ship. All they had to eat on the way down was
walrus blubber, and so great was their anxiety for us that Lieutenant
Schwatka and Eeglee-leock left the sled behind at Chesterfield Inlet
with Nanook, and walked one day and night without resting, reaching
Marble Island at six o'clock in the morning, after a walk of about
seventy-five miles.
One of the women in our camp died this day, her death hastened by
privation. She was the wife of Te-wort, or "Papa," as he is universally
called, not only by the white visitors to Hudson's Bay, but by his own
people. The benignant Inuit custom that allows a plurality of wives to
those that desire it, leaves him not altogether comfortless in his old
age; but "Cockeye" was his first favorite wife, and the mother of the
great majority of his children.
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