We will suppose this hut to measure about five or five and a half feet in height, and about ten feet in diameter. The walls are made of stones, moss, and the bones of seals, narwhals, whales, and other ocean-creatures. They are not arched, but recede inward gradually from the foundation, and are capped by long oblong slabs of slate-stone extending from side to side. We enter: the flooring consists of thin flat stones. At the back part of the hut the floor rises about a foot, and this breck, as the elevation is called, serves both as couch and seat, being covered with a thick layer of dried moss and grass, under seal-skins, dog-skins, and bear-skins. Similar elevations are placed at the corners in front; under one of which will lie, perhaps, a litter of pups, with their mother, and under the other a portion of seal’s meat. In the square front of the hut, above the passage-way, a window is inserted; the light being admitted through a square sheet of strips of dried intestines, sewed together. The entrance is in the floor, close to the front wall, and is covered with a piece of seal-skin. Seal-skins are hung about the walls to dry. At the edge of the breck, on either side, sits a woman, each busily engaged in attending to a smoky lamp, fed with seal’s oil. These lamps are made of soapstone, and in shape resemble a clam-shell, being about eight inches in diameter. The cavity is filled with oil obtained from seal’s blubber; and on the straight edge the flame burns quite vividly, the wick which furnishes it being made of moss. The business of the women is apparently to prevent the lamps from smoking, and to keep them supplied with blubber, large pieces of which are placed in the cavity, the heat drawing out the oil. About three inches above this flame hangs, suspended from the ceiling, an oblong square pot made of the same material as the lamp, in which a joint of seal is simmering slowly. Above this hangs a rack, made of bare rib-bones, bound together crosswise, on which stockings and mittens, and various garments made of seal-skin, are laid to dry. No other fire can be seen than that which the lamps supply, nor is any other needed. So many persons are crowded into the confined interior that it is insufferably hot, while the whole place reeks with the smell of seal-flesh, seal-oil, and seal-skin!
It is natural enough that we should here introduce an account of the Eskimo mode of catching seals. The great season of the seal-hunt is the spring, when the inoffensive phocæ gambol and sport in the open water-ways near the coasts, or clamber on the ice-floes to enjoy the rays of the tardy sun. They are of a wary and timid disposition, and we may suppose that their traditions have taught them to be on their guard against man; but as all their habits and ways are well known to the Eskimo, they do not succeed in eluding his dexterous perseverance. Sometimes the hunter attires himself in a seal-skin, and so exactly imitates their appearance and movements that he approaches within spear-range of them before the disguise is detected; or else he creeps into their haunts behind a white screen, which is propelled in front of him by means of a sledge. As the season verges upon midsummer less precaution becomes necessary; the eyes of the seals being so congested by the fierce radiance of the sun that they are often nearly blind. In winter they are assailed while labouring at their breathing-holes, or when they rise for the purpose of respiration.
If an Eskimo satisfies himself that a seal is working away beneath the ice, he takes up his station at the suspected point, and seldom quits it, however severe the weather, until he has captured the animal. To protect himself from the freezing blast, he throws up a snow-wall four feet in height, and seating himself in its shade, he rests his spears, lines, and other appliances on a number of little forked sticks inserted into the snow, in order that he may move them, when wanted, without making the slightest noise. He carries his caution to such an excess, that he even ties his own knees together with a thong to prevent his garments from rustling! about
AN ESKIMO SEAL-HUNTER.
To discover whether the seal is still gnawing at the ice, our patient watcher makes use of his keep-kuttuk; a slender rod of bone, no thicker than ordinary bell-wire, cleverly rounded, with a knob at one end and a sharp point at the other.
This implement he thrusts into the ice, and the knob, which remains above the surface, informs him by its motion whether the animal is still engaged in making his hole; if it does not move, the attempt is given up in that place, and the hunter betakes himself elsewhere. When he supposes the hole to be nearly completed, he stealthily raises his spear, and as soon as he can hear the blowing of the seal, and knows therefore that the ice-crust is very thin, he drives it into the unsuspecting animal with all his might; and then hacks away with his sharp-edged knife, or panna, the intervening ice, so as to repeat his blows, and secure his victim. The neituk, or Phoca hispida, being the smallest seal, is held while struggling, either by the hand, or by a line one end of which is twisted round a spear driven into the ice. In the case of the bearded seal, or oguka, the line is coiled round the hunter’s leg or arm; for a walrus, round his body, the feet being at the same time firmly planted against a hummock of ice, so as to increase the capability of resistance. A boy of fifteen can kill a neituk, but the larger animals can be mastered only by a robust and experienced adult.
We come now to speak of the Whale, which, in size, is the sovereign of the Arctic seas, and the grandest type of marine life.
Whales (Cetacea) are, as most persons now-a-days know, an order of aquatic mammals, distinguished by their fin-like anterior extremities, and by the peculiarity that the place of the posterior extremities is supplied by a large horizontal caudal fin, or tail; while the cervical bones are so compressed that the animal, externally at least, seems to have no neck.