This doubtless will surprise those whose ideas of "moonshiners" are associated with southern Appalachian ranges, lonely mountain coves, revenue raids, and romance. But here was an Eskimo "moonshiner" who made unlicensed whiskey under the midnight sun and yet was as genuine a "moonshiner" as any lawless southern mountaineer. The sailors, being thirsty souls, at once opened negotiations with him for liquor. He drew from beneath his deer-skin coat a skin bottle filled with liquor and sold it to us for fifteen hardtack. Wherefore there was, for a time, joy in the forecastle--in limited quantity, for the bottle was small. This product of the ice-bound North was the hottest stuff I ever tasted. The captain was not long in discovering that the Eskimo had liquor to sell and sent a boat ashore with a demijohn. The jug was brought back filled with Siberian "moonshine," which had been paid for with a sack of flour. The boat's crew found on the beach a little distillery in comparison with which the pot stills of the Kentucky and Tennessee mountains, made of old kitchen kettles would seem elaborate and up-to-date plants. The still itself was an old tin oil can; the worm, a twisted gun barrel; the flake-stand, a small powder keg. The mash used in making the liquor, we learned, was a fermented mixture of flour and molasses obtained in trade from whale ships. It was boiled in the still, a twist of moss blazing in a pan of blubber oil doing duty as a furnace. The vapor from the boiling mash passed through the worm in the flake-stand and was condensed by ice-cold water with which the powder keg was kept constantly filled by hand. The liquor dripped from the worm into a battered old tomato can. It was called "kootch" and was potently intoxicating. An Eskimo drunk on "kootch" was said to be brave enough to tackle a polar bear, single-handed. The little still was operated in full view of the villagers. There was no need of secrecy. Siberia boasted no revenue raiders. The owner of the plant did an extensive trade up and down the coast and it was said natives from Diomede Islands and Alaska paddled over in their canoes and _bidarkas_ to buy his liquor. They paid for it in walrus tusk ivory, whale bone, and skins and the "moonshiner" was the richest man in all that part of Siberia.