WHALE-CATCHING AT POINT BARROW. 831 



It is in these leads of open water that the whales work their way 

 to their unknown breeding grounds in the northeast, passing by 

 Point Barrow chiefly during the months of May and June, and 

 it is during this season of migration that they are hunted by the 

 Eskimos. 



The chase of the whale is of great importance to these people. . 

 The capture of one of these monsters means meat in abundance ; 

 blubber for the lamps, and for trade with the Eskimos whom 

 they meet in the summer ; whalebone to purchase ammunition ; 

 tools and luxuries from the ships ; and the choicest morsel that an 

 Eskimo knows, the " black-skin " or epidermis of the whale. Con- 

 sequently, the successful whaleman is the best man in the vil- 

 lage, and soon grows rich and influential. 



But to return to the seal -hunters and their observations of the 

 ice. From long experience, the Eskimos are able to judge pretty 

 accurately where the " leads " will first open in the spring, and, 

 when they have concluded where the boats will be launched, they 

 set to work to select the best path for dragging out the boats 

 through the rough ice-field. They soon make a regular beaten 

 trail, winding in and out among the hummocks, taking advantage 

 of all the smooth fields of ice that they can, and, from time to 

 time as they pass back and forth from their seal-nets, they chip 

 off projecting corners of ice with their ice-picks, and with the 

 same implement widen out the narrow defiles in the road, and 

 smooth off the roughest places. Men sometimes go out on pur- 

 pose to work for a few hours on the road, using ice-picks or 

 " whale-spades " (something like a heavy, broad chisel, mounted on 

 a long pole, used for cutting the blubber off a whale), which they 

 have obtained from the white men. It is a pretty rough path, 

 however, at the best. 



By the middle of April all the hunters have returned from 

 the winter deer-hunt, and the business of getting ready for whal- 

 ing is taken seriously in hand. The frames of the great skin 

 boats must be taken down from the scaffolds where they have 

 rested all winter, and carefully overhauled and repaired, while 

 every article of wood that will be used in whaling, from the 

 timbers of the boat to the shafts of the spears and harpoons, 

 must be scraped perfectly clean, in honor of the noble quarry. 

 Gear must be looked to, and the skin covers for the boats re- 

 paired and soaked in the sea, through holes in the ice cut close 

 to the shore, till they are soft enough to stretch over the frame- 

 work. 



. Meanwhile, a careful watch is kept from the village cliff for 

 the dark cloud to seaward which indicates open water ; and if the 

 much-talked-of east wind does not speedily begin to blow, the 

 most skillful of the wizards or medicine-men get out on the bluff, 



