The Eskimo, despite the severity of their surroundings, are a merry people, and have many diversions. Football, strange to say, is a favourite pastime, but neither their method nor their ball would pass muster with a college expert. The ball is a pudgy affair from three to seven inches in diameter, and is either kicked or whipped along. The whip is a short stick with several loops of seal thong at the end. The game, according to Turner, is a favourite with all. Throwing stones at a mark is also a pastime. Another is a kind of wrestling or struggling with each other, such as is in vogue with almost all the tribes of the continent. Turner says: “The opponents remove all their superfluous garments, seize each other around the waist and lock hands behind each other’s backs. The feet are spread widely apart and each endeavours to draw, by the strength of the arms alone, the back of his opponent into a curve and thus bring him off his feet. Then with a lift he is quickly thrown flat on his back. The fall must be such that the head touches the ground.... The feet are never used for tripping.”[292] Anything like scientific boxing is unknown among the tribes of the continent. When they try anything of this sort it is a mere clawing at each other’s heads, and one professional pugilist, if fists alone were used, could knock out a whole tribe. Among the Hudson Bay Eskimo, a popular game is played by trying to catch, on the end of an ivory point, an ivory piece that looks something like a stumpy revolver. A string is attached to it and to the ivory point, and the game is to throw up the piece and cause the point to enter one of the holes and catch it. Cards, such as we have, are known to almost all tribes, and where they have not learned games from the whites they invent some of their own.