Page:The Netsilik Eskimos (1931).djvu/9

The material for the following delineation of the Netsilingmiut and the Utkuhikjalingmiut was collected during the period from April to the beginning of November 1923. These seven months, however, by no means represent a time of uninterrupted labour, for much of it had to be spent on travelling from village to village and also on hunting trips for the purpose of procuring food for ourselves and our dogs. What is more, these hunts occupied much more of my time than I had originally intended, because for five months unforeseen circumstances compelled me to do without the Greenlander, Qâvigarssuaq, who had otherwise accompanied us as special hunter to my expedition.

On the other hand, in the course of this wandering life I learned to know the people in a more intimate manner than if, well supplied with provisions, I had been able to spend the same amount of time in tent-camps employed in writing down my observations to the exclusion of all else.

It is a matter of course that I owe gratitude to my predecessors in these regions, specially Roald Amundsen and Godfred Hansen.

As in the foregoing Volume VII I have elected to allow the various experiences I had on my journeys to form a part of the ethnographical descriptions. It is probable that many details ought properly to have been grouped separately; and indeed I am aware that in adopting this method I am committing a breach of current practice. I have determined to do so, however, rather than break the continuance of the narrative merely for the purpose of building up a dry and schematical grouping which, in many cases, would not form a collective and exhaustive whole anyhow.

The phonetic spelling used is as follows:^[1]

a:	as in French "aller".
ai:	as in English "high".
au:	as in English "how".
ä:	as in English "hat".
ᴀ:	before r and q, as in English "far".
b:	as in English "boy".