C Ihe Ladies c cu. V'VVAN - History and Classics, Department of

Eskimos at Aklavik 63feelings consisted in smiles and more smiles and then yet more smiles. It was agood currency and for the next two weeks we used it freely every day.The women wore either long and shapeless cotton dresses or fur-lined parkaswith hoods, they carried their babies tightly swathed in bags on their backs andthey walked with a waddle, toes always turned in. Their smiles were entrancing.The men wore parkas, trousers and high mukluks, or water boots, made from theskin of sea mammals. One old man wore two labrets in his lower lip. Weexchanged handshakes with the men and greetings, each speaking in our ownlanguage which, of course, sounded like gibberish to the one who listened. WhenI tired of this form of intercourse I would always turn to the babies, pointing atthem with admiration and indeed they were lovely creatures. They must havebeen born smiling. There was one old woman who, as I learned later, was reputedto be a wife of the explorer Stefansson.At midday, while Gwen had her meal spread-eagled on two folding chairs, Ilunched alone with an American trapper, our friends having all gone ashore tofeed at the convent. This trapper was going out in the Distributor, after 14 years inthe North, taking his Eskimo wife with him. He told me how hard it was to findtwo men, even two good men, who could spend a whole winter together withoutquarrelling, a fact which accounts for the solitary lives of so many trappers.After lunch Gwen was carried ashore on a stretcher by four men and takenstraight up to the convent balcony. Then the Distributor backed slowly out from theriver bank and steamed away, bearing the judge and his party and many newpassengers, outward bound for the South. A mixed crowd of Indians, Eskimos,whites and half-breeds cheered the departing vessel and we were left alone on ourbalcony with the strangest feeling of isolation. Little did we guess that very soonthe Arctic wilderness would afford us moments of experience incomparablymore lonely. Mter all, here at Aklavik we had a solid room of our own, kind hostessesand also several hundred fellow-creatures, coloured and white, within hail;moreover we had the prospect of another steamer arriving, in six weeks time,with news from the outside world.By the end of that afternoon however we were more distressed by hunger thanby loneliness, for we had lunched at noon and only later discovered that theconvent clocks were always two hours slow, so that we had to wait eight hours forour supper. Mter supper we went to bed and slept for 12 hours.