Nearly half the Eskimos in the world now live in Greenland. Not many of
them have ever seen a snow house, although most of their huge island is
covered with ice.
[Illustration: With luck a North Greenlander can catch a hundred or
more small birds in an hour.]
Greenland Eskimos have known white men for more than nine hundred
years, but they still hunt in many of the old ways. In the northern
part of the island, hunters use nets to catch little birds called auks,
which come there by the millions on the exact day the last snow melts
in spring. It takes eight or nine auks to make a good meal for one
person!
[Illustration]
Sometimes Greenlanders paddle their kayaks out to icebergs and perch
high up, on the lookout for seals. Instead of being just pure white,
the icebergs shine with beautiful tints of blue and green and purple.
Greenlanders' clothes, too, are bright, embroidered and decorated with
many of the colors of the Aurora Borealis.
[Illustration: People in West Greenland dress like this. Some women
pull their hair so tight that it comes out and they often get bald over
the ears.]
[Illustration: Eskimos are such good mechanics they quickly learned to
fit outboard motors on umiaks.]