DO ESKIMOS DRINK OIL?
[To the Editor of the SPECTATOR.] SIR,—I have been considerably surprised by Mr. Stefansson's recent article to the effect that Eskimos do not drink oil. I had certainly been led, not by tradition but by personal observation, to the contrary view. When I accompanied the late Mr. Hesketh Prichard into the interior of Labrador in 1910, we engaged an Eskimo to accompany us from the coast. After a, few days he deserted us in the night and returned home. He had with him a piece of what I was told was dried white-whale meat—it looked like a piece of an old boot—and a large bladder of yellow oil (? seal-oil). While he was with us, so far as I remember, he shared our rations, and we imagined, in the light of subsequent events, that this private store was to secure his own retreat in the event of our going further into the interior than he liked. He certainly did not obtrude his own oil-drinking talents upon us as " tourists." But I was certainly led to understand that these provisions were the normal equipment of an Eskimo on a hunting trip. On the huts at the coast-stations many similar bladders of oil were hanging, one of which would have been more than enough to satisfy the curiosity of all the visitors likely to come to the place during the entire season. Will Mr. Stefansson enlighten me as to what these were for, if not, as seemed to be the impression on the spot, for internal consumption ? I can, if he likes, show him a photograph wherein these bladders hanging on the huts are visible.
No doubt the Labrador Eskimo has been more exposed to civilization than those with whom Mr. Stefansson is acquainted, but this seems to have led, for the most part, to the adoption of European or American foods and habits, not to the creation of a quasi-barbarous practice, with no real relation to aboriginal custom. Possibly one of the Moravian missionaries will corroborate or refute my statement, —I am, Sir, &c., G. M. GATHORNE-HARDY, 80 Sumner Place, S.W. 7.
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