[Footnote N106: “They have no set Time for Meals, but every one eats when he is hungry, except when they go to sea, and then their chief Repast is a supper after they are come home in the Evening.” (Egede, Greenland, p. 135. Compare also, Crantz, vol. 1, p. 145.)] When a family returns from the spring deer hunt with plenty of venison they usually keep open house for a day or two. The women of the household, with sometimes the assistance of a neighbor or two, keep the pot continually boiling, sending in dishes of meat at intervals, while the house is full of guests who stay for a short time, eating, smoking, and chatting, and then retire to make room for others. Messes are sometimes sent out to invalids who can not come to the feast. One household in the spring of 1883 consumed in this way two whole reindeer in 24 hours. They use only their hands and a knife in eating meat, usually filling the mouth and cutting or biting off the mouthful. They are large eaters, some of them, especially the women, eating all the time when they have plenty, but we never saw them gorge themselves in the manner described by Dr. Kane (2d Grinnell Exp., passim) and other writers. Their habits of hospitality prevent their laying up any large supply of meat, though blubber is carefully saved for commercial use, and they depend for subsistence, almost from day to day, on their success in hunting. When encamped, however, in small parties in the summer they often take more seals than they can consume. The carcasses of these, stripped of their skins and blubber, are buried in the gravel close to the camp, and dug up and brought home when meat becomes scarce in the winter. DRINKS.