158 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

into his own nose, until the remaining morsel is not considered any too
large to be swallowed at once}.

Of course, salt as a seasoning adjunct was never resorted to, and even
to-day it is hardly ever used in the north.

To cook marmot meat, the animal is often cast in its entirety upon
the fire, and when so thoroughly singed that the skin commences to crack,
the carving process is commenced and the pieces of meat either boiled or
roasted. The Navahoes prepare their corn in the form of hominy, balls or
mush; the green corn is baked in its husks, and a kind of pancake or tor-
tilla is also made by them of corn meal.

Cooking and all that pertains to cooking is, of course, woman’s work.
Yet, strange enough, the manly Loucheux will not eat meat prepared by a
woman, if we are to believe Richardson?. Among them cooking is man’s
office, he declares. On the other hand, no Carrier will ever stoop to as much
as fetch water for the cook. This is reserved for the women, the children
and the orphans of both sexes.

Gormandizing.

The elasticity of the Indians’ stomach is truly prodigious. They will
gorge themselves with food until a stranger may wonder how they do not
burst, after which they feel prepared to stand a fast of several days’ duration.
Enter their huts at any time after a successful hunt, sit there if you like for
a whole day, and you will scarcely find the fire unoccupied a single moment.
As Th. Simpson says, when not hunting or travelling, they are always eating
if awake. They may not consume much at a time, except at feasts, but some-
how they manage to renew the operation on the most frivolous pretext.
“Now, it is a little roast, a partridge or rabbit perhaps; now, a tid-bit broiled
under the ashes; anon, a portly kettle, well filled with venison, swings over
the fire; then comes a choice dish of curdled blood, followed by the sinews
and marrow-bones of deer’s legs singed on the embers. And so the grand
business of life goes unceasingly round, interrupted only by sleep’.

That author’s namesake and distant relative, Sir George Simpson, says
of the Yakutis of eastern Siberia that “they are the best eaters on the face

" The above had been written for some time when I came upon the following from
R. J. Bush’s “Reindeer, Dogs, and Snow-Shoes”, p. 281: “Sheath-knives were their only table
implements. Each one, taking a huge piece of venison, put as much of it as he possibly could
in his mouth, and then, by a dexterous up-stroke of his knife, shaved it off close to his lips,
the edge barely grazing the end of his nose as he severed the meat. Little children were as
expert as the adults in handling their knives, and, though I was in constant dread of seeing
one of their noses sliced off, the caldron was emptied without a single accident”. The natives
he speaks of are the Tunguses of eastern Siberia.

? Op. cit., vol. 1, p. 383.

* “Narrative of the Discoveries”, p. 324.

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