Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/160

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147

and Ponds Inlet are deeper than the lamps from the west coast of Hudson Bay; but this is not the rule, at any rate at Ponds Inlet; it is the same type of lamp that is used by the Aiviliks and the Ponds Inlet Eskimos.

Lyon[1] found a lamp that was made of granite slabs cemented together; it is now in the Royal Scottish Museum, Edinburgh, and is 32½ cm long, 15 cm wide; the bottom is made of two longitudinal pieces placed at angles to each other; the front edge is almost straight, the back edge curved, made of several pieces cemented together.

Nowadays lamps of sheet iron are often used, mostly of the same shape as the stone lamps; in case of need a naturally hollowed stone, a saucer or a cooking-pot lid may be used.

The lamp is placed on three sticks (pituangit), which are pushed down into the snow of the platform, or, in the tent or qarmaq, on three stones. A bowl for collecting dripping blubber, such as often used by other Eskimos, I have never seen used by the Iglulik Eskimos; Parry,[2] however, mentions "a small skin basket for catching the oil that falls over".

When the lamp is to be lighted, it is filled with blubber; this may be in liquid or solid form. In spring, when ũtoq seal-hunting is going on, a large store of blubber is usually collected; this is cut up and filled into a whole-flayed sealskin, the openings of which are then closed and it is placed in a meat cache. There it lies until the summer is over. The pieces of blubber are gradually turned into liquid fat — train oil — by fermentation. When in winter these blubber bags (oqsut) are taken out, the blubber is ready for use and may be poured directly into the lamp.[3] If on the other hand the blubber is of recently killed animals it must be beaten in order to press the oil out. It is placed on a flat stone (kauarsivik) and beaten. with the blubber pounder (kauarsit). The common form of this implement will be seen on fig. 89 (Ponds Inlet). It is a branch of antler with the appendent piece of the stem; the length of the handle is 27 cm, that of the head 12 cm. Another of the seven blubber. pounders in the collection has a head only 7 cm long. A European hammer, or the back of an axe, is often used for blubber pounding. however.

When the blubber has been pounded. it is laid in the lamp where it gradually melts. Moss (ikúmaq) is usually used for the wick of the lamp, after having been chopped small with the ulo. (Parry[4] says that it is rubbed with the hands): I have also seen cotton grass used

  1. ↑ Lyon 1824, p. 320, Parry 1824, p. 261.
  2. ↑ l. c., p. 503.
  3. ↑ This method is also described by Hall 1879, p. 179, from Repulse Bay.
  4. ↑ 1824, p. 501.
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