After these come the extempore efforts of the current evening. Each man contributes a song of his own, turning upon some event in his career, or some more or less poetic fancy which has occurred to him. The songs have probably been composed and polished, and possibly practised, in private for some time, but the contest is the occasion of their publication to the musical world. They are most attentively received, and judged by the Angakooeet. [[244]]
The outstanding event of the evening, to which all look forward on the tip-toe of expectation, is the tournament of satires between the ptarmigans and the ducks. A ball of thoroughly good-tempered musical ridicule is tossed backwards and forwards between each pair of singers, accompanied by roars of laughter from the auditors, who hold their sides and roll in ecstasies of enjoyment. Tears of merriment stream down the women’s faces.
This sort of thing goes on night after night for as long as a whole week; and only at the end of that time does the gathering begin to break up, and set about the prodigious business of getting on with the summer’s work.
As soon as this interlude of festivity and recreation is concluded, the tribes separate, each bound for its own appointed sphere of hunting operations, independently of the others. The new camp is soon pitched in some sheltered valley where there is a running stream, but not too close to the selected district, for fear of alarming the shy quarry. The men then go daily to search the hills and stalk the deer.
As soon as a herd is located, word is passed down to the camp, and the women rally to the men’s assistance. As each arrives she receives her instructions from the hunters. A valley is selected having but one exit, where there seem to be plenty of boulders. The women station themselves in a rough sort of ring all round it, hidden behind the rocks, each one with her skin jacket off and slung over her arm. Meanwhile, [[245]]the men creep up, and, keeping also under cover, surround the herd, and begin, by the well aimed throwing of first one stone, then another, to drive it off in the direction of the selected ravine, where other hunters are gathered in force with bows and arrows ready.
The deer, still suspecting nothing, move slowly to their fate. Presently one woman, to the rear, and then another, gets up in the open and beats her jacket on the rock behind which she had been hiding. This scares the creatures forward in the right direction, and drives them within the reach of the men. Directly they come within bowshot their doom is sealed. So skilful are the hunters that no man expends more than an arrow apiece on the deer. The whole herd is killed with the greatest celerity.
The carcases are retrieved and skinned, and immense feasting follows. These manœuvres are repeated day after day throughout the whole season, until the snow begins to appear again on the higher ranges, and the arctic summer is on the wane. Gradually the tribesfolk move off again towards the lower grounds, the south, and the sea, transporting with them huge bundles of invaluable skins and a great quantity of deer hams, until one by one they reach the various points of water where they left and stored their boats on the up-country trip.
There is no general point of assembly on the return journey. Each tribe takes its own course and works its way back towards its own territory unaccompanied [[246]]by the others. The women and children get a brief spell of rest when they reach the coast, while the men put in a few days seal hunting, to provision the homeward voyage. Finally, the umiaks are launched again and reloaded to the very gunwales; the sails are hoisted, and the fleet draws away through the archipelagoes of the coast to its port of registration!
Not infrequently on one of these big summer hunting expeditions, traces are discovered of a winter deer hunting party which had been overtaken by disaster. The evidences of some tragedy lie there for all to read: the sled torn to pieces, weapons scattered about, small boxes lying here and there, and bones—human, canine or vulpine—all over the place. Hunger, perhaps, overtook the party; sickness followed. Wolves attacked, or the hungry team of dogs got out of hand and tore down the hunters, who were unable successfully to defend themselves. The writer could instance many a savage incident of this description.
In a very similar district to the one described in the preceding account of the summer hunting, there was a fiord leading up to a landlocked bay, a favourite resort of the white whales. Regularly each year the hunters of the tribes in the vicinity used to go to hunt these creatures with gun and spear, taking splendid hauls of meat back to the camp, and bales of stout hide to be made into thongs, harness, etc. So much flesh and offal was left about on the scene of action that wolves came to infest the entire region. In early [[247]]spring the fiord afforded a particularly good sealing ground, being so sheltered from the crashing seas outside.