The next labour is that of the squaws, who have to do the curing, drying, and oil-making. Seated in a circle, they are busy stringing the fish. They do not gut or in any way clean them, but simply pass long smooth sticks through their eyes, skewering on each stick as many as it will hold, and then lashing a smaller piece transversely across the ends, to prevent the fish from slipping off the skewer. This done, next follows the drying, which is generally achieved in the thick smoke at the top of the sheds, the sticks of fish being there hung up side by side. They soon dry, and acquire a flavour of wood-smoke, which helps also to preserve them. No salt is used by Indians in any of their systems of curing fish. When dry, the candle-fish are carefully packed in large frails made from cedar-bark or rushes, much like those one buys for a penny at Billingsgate; then they are stowed away on high stages made of poles, like a rough scaffolding. This precaution is essential, for the Indian children and dogs have an amiable weakness for eatables; and as lock-and-key are unknown to the redskins, they take this way of baffling the appetites of the incorrigible pilferers. The bales are kept until required for winter. However hungry or however short of food an Indian family may be during summer-time, it seldom will break in upon the winter ‘cache.’ I have never seen any fish half as fat and as good for Arctic winter-food as these little candle-fish. It is next to impossible to broil or fry them, for they melt completely into oil. Some idea of their marvellous fatness may be gleaned from the fact, that the natives use them as lamps for lighting their lodges. The fish, when dried, has a piece of rush-pith, or a strip from the inner bark of the cypress-tree (_Thuja gigantea_), drawn through it, a long round needle made of hard wood being used for the purpose; it is then lighted, and burns steadily until consumed. I have read comfortably by its light; the candlestick, literally a stick for the candle, consists of a bit of wood split at one end, with the fish inserted in the cleft. These ready-made sea-candles—little dips wanting only a wick that can be added in a minute—are easily transformed by heat and pressure into liquid. When the Indian drinks instead of burning them, he gets a fuel in the shape of oil, that keeps up the combustion within him, and which is burnt and consumed in the lungs just as it was by the wick, but only gives heat. It is by no mere chance that myriads of small fish, in obedience to a wondrous instinct, annually visit the northern seas, containing within themselves all the elements necessary for supplying light, heat, and life to the poor savage, who, but for this, must perish in the bitter cold of the long dreary winter.