"Kalitan never asks for anything," said Ted. "I asked him once why it was, and he said Indian boys never got what they asked for; that sometimes they had things given to them that they hadn't asked for, but, if he asked the Tyee for anything, all he got was 'Good Indian get things for himself,' and he had to go to work to get the thing he wanted. I guess it's a pretty good plan, too, for I notice that I get just as much as I did when I used to tease you for things," Teddy added, sagely. "Wise boy," said his father. "You're certainly more agreeable to live with. The next thing you are to have is a visit to an Esquimo village, and, if I can find some of the Esquimo carvings, you shall have something to take home to mother. Kalitan, what would you like to remember the Esquimos by?" Kalitan smiled and replied, simply, "_Mukluks_." "What are _mukluks_?" demanded Ted. "Esquimo moccasins," said Mr. Strong. "Well, you shall both have a pair, and they are rather pretty things, too, as the Esquimos make them." FOOTNOTE: [14] The name given to the boggy soil of the beach. CHAPTER XI AFTERNOON TEA IN AN EGLU THE Esquimo village was reached across the _tundra_, and Teddy and Kalitan were much interested in the queer houses. Built for the long winter of six or eight months, when it is impossible to do anything out-of-doors, the _eglu_[15] seems quite comfortable from the Esquimo point of view, but very strange to their American cousins. "I thought the Esquimos lived in snow houses," said Ted, as they looked at the queer little huts, and Kalitan exclaimed: "Huh! Innuit queer Indian!" "No," said Mr. Strong; "his hut is built by digging a hole about six feet deep and standing logs up side by side around the hole. On the top of these are placed logs which rest even with the ground. Stringers are put across these, and other logs and moss and mud roofed over it, leaving an opening in the middle about two feet square. This is covered with a piece of walrus entrail so thin and transparent that light easily passes through it, and it serves as a window, the only one they have. A smoke-hole is cut through the roof, but there is no door, for the hut is entered through another room built in the same way, fifteen or twenty feet distant, and connected by an underground passage about two feet square with the main room. The entrance-room is entered through a hole in the roof, from which a ladder reaches the bottom of the passage." "Can we go into a hut?" asked Ted. "I'll ask that woman cooking over there," said Mr. Strong, as they went up to a woman who was cooking over a peat fire, holding over the coals an old battered skillet in which she was frying fish. She nodded and smiled at the boys, and, as Esquimos are always friendly and hospitable souls, told them to go right into her _eglu_, which was close by.