During the day I visited the store and blubber house, where Eskimo men and women were engaged in cutting seal blubber into small slices and pounding these with heavy wooden mallets. The pounded blubber is placed in zinc vats, and, when the summer comes, exposed in the vats to the sun's heat, which renders out a fine white oil. This oil is put into casks and shipped to the trade.
In the depth of winter seal hunting is impossible, and during that season the Eskimo families gather in huts, or igloosoaks, at the mission stations. There are sixty-nine of these people connected with the Ramah station and I visited them all with Mr. Schmidt. Their huts were heated with stone lamps and seal oil, for the country is bare of wood. The fuel for the mission house is brought from the South by the steam
