Page:Material Culture of the Iglulik Eskimos.djvu/73

dupe them into believing that it is a row of people standing there. These stone fences are still to be seen in many places. A little way up country at Paaske Sound, in Admiralty Inlet, I saw a belt of more than a hundred small cairns running at right angles to the coast (fig. 33). I have seen similar rows at Ipiutaq, the root of the Amitsoq Peninsula, at Tarreojaruluk at the head of Steensby Fjord and a small lake in the country north of the trading station at Repulse Bay. Freuchen saw one at Cleveland Harbour, east of Haviland Bay, where Fig. 33.Stone cairus for caribou-hunting, Paaske Sound. several rows converged towards the sea. Parry^[1] mentions near Hurd Channel "a singular assemblage of flat stones, set up edgeways, each about three yards apart and extending at least for five hundred yards, down to a small lake."

The skinning of caribou is the men's work, and they do it with astonishing skill: the skin is cut up the belly and along the back of the legs and then flayed off. The big two-edged flensing knife slashes. to and bro and, in the course of a moment the big animal is parted: cut up along the belly, the entrails removed, head and marrow bones cut off, heart and fillet and the sinews likewise, hams and shoulders. which are the most fleshy parts, are removed; the fat parts round the spine, breastbone and ribs are the first to be cooked. During the skinning process, when the hands are dripping with steaming blood, a delicacy is now and then snatched: a piece of the heart, a little gut or kidney fat. The blood and stomach contents are