mouth to undergo the masticating and lubricating process. But it does increase your respect for them to see with what cheerfulness these women apply themselves to their exceedingly disagreeable labor. Seal-skins for making coats and trousers are dressed with the hair on, the fleshy membranes, or "mum'-me," being cut off with an oodloo before they are washed, stretched, and dried. One good warm spring day is sufficient to dry a seal-skin, which for this purpose is stretched over the ground or snow by means of long wooden pins, which keep it elevated two or three inches, thus allowing the air to circulate underneath it. Sometimes in the early spring, before the sun attains sufficient power, a few skins for immediate use are dried over the lamps in the igloos. This, however, is regarded as a slow and troublesome process, and the open air is preferred when available. A few seal-skins and walrus skins, from which the hair has been neatly removed, are left to hang in the wind and sun for several days, until they acquire a creamy whiteness, and are then used for trimming. The Kinnepatoos, who are the dandies of the Esquimau nation, tan nearly all their skins white. Their walrus and seal lines, and indeed their sled lashings and dog harness, are sometimes white, as well as the trimmings of their boots and gloves. Nearly all the varieties of seal are sometimes killed during the summer and fall, while swimming in the open water; but though often seen when the weather is calm, the Esquimaux seldom fire at them, because until the latter part of September they will sink to the bottom, though killed instantly by a shot through the head or neck.