As a result of their situation the Eskimos led a very
different life from that of the Indians to the south.
They must rely on fishing and hunting for food. In that
almost treeless north they had no wood to build boats or
houses, and no vegetables or plants to supply them either
with food or with the materials of industry. But the very
rigour of their surroundings called forth in them a
marvellous ingenuity. They made boats of seal skins
stretched tight over walrus bones, and clothes of furs
and of the skins and feathers of birds. They built winter
houses with great blocks of snow put together in the form
of a bowl turned upside down. They heated their houses
by burning blubber or fat in dish-like lamps chipped out
of stones. They had, of course, no written literature.
They were, however, not devoid of art. They had legends
and folk-songs, handed down from generation to generation
with the utmost accuracy. In the long night of the Arctic
winter they gathered in their huts to hear strange
monotonous singing by their bards: a kind of low chanting,
very strange to European ears, and intended to imitate
the sounds of nature, the murmur of running waters and
the sobbing of the sea.
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