112 SEAL-HUNTING. — ESQUIMAU VILLAGE. 



ill his hand, and which, crossing the crack, broke the 

 fall. The barometer was my best one, and is of course 

 a hopeless wreck. 



Carl and Christian, my two Danish recruits from 

 Upernavik, have been setting nets for seal. These 

 nets are made in the Greenland fashion, of seal-skin 

 thongs, with large meshes. They are kept in a verti- 

 cal position under the ice by stones attached to their 

 lower margin ; and the unsuspecting seal, swimming 

 along in pursuit of a school of shrimps for a meal, or 

 seeking a crack or hole in the ice to catch a breath of 

 air, strikes it and becomes entangled in it, and is soon 

 drowned. Most of the winter seal-fishing of Green- 

 land is done in this manner ; and it is in this that the 

 dogs are most serviceable, in carrying the hunter rap- 

 idly from place to place in his inspection of the nets, 

 and in taking home the captured animals upon the 

 sledge. This species of hunting is attended with 

 much risk, as the hunter is obliged to run out on the 

 newly-formed ice. Jensen has enlivened many of my 

 evenings with descriptions of his adventures upon the 

 ice-fields while looking after his nets. On one occa- 

 sion the ice broke up, and he was set adrift, and would 

 have been lost had not his crystal raft caught on a 

 small island, to which he escaped, and where he was 

 forced to remain without shelter until the frost built 

 for him a bridge to the main land. The hardihood and 

 courage of these Greenland hunters is astonishing. 



Although the wind has been blowing hard, I have 

 strolled over to the north side of the Fiord on a visit 

 to the Esquimau village of Etah, which is about four 

 miles away in a northeasterly direction. The hut 

 there, as I had already surmised, was uninhabited, but 

 bore evidence of having been abandoned only a short 



