146 FOUR YEARS IN THE WHITE NORTH [Mar. 



cordant deep grunt of the walrus. The heads turn at 

 the famiHar cry, rise slightly out of water, dive, and 

 with vigorous strokes boldly proceed toward the dark 

 mass at the edge of the ice. As the heads break water 

 again there is a swish of flying harpoons and trailing 

 line. An angry snort and a mighty splash ! Quickly the 

 iron-pointed "toque" is driven deep into the ice through 

 a loop in the end of the harpoon line, and then the 

 struggle begins, a battle which sometimes lasts for hours ! 

 How about your twenty -pound salmon on an eight-ounce 

 rod.^ We have here a two-thousand-pound bunch of 

 plunging muscle on a quarter-inch singing, humming, 

 twanging rawhide line! And not for pure sport is the 

 struggle waged, but often for the life of the starving dogs 

 and for the very existence of the pinch-faced wife and 

 children snuggled up for warmth in a snow house be- 

 neath the cliffs. 



And even when the quarry has been secured and 

 partly dismembered, there may come a hurried cry of 

 warning, a dropping of the meat, a rush toward dogs 

 and sledge, a snapping of whips, a race for life against 

 a change of wind and a breaking up of the sea ice. 

 Rushing from far offshore one day in the midst of an 

 excited throng, I was astonished by the sudden break- 

 ing up of ice and the tumultuous rising and falling of the 

 different sections over a surface which a few minutes 

 before had been so placid. Yes, it is a precarious existence 

 which these polar children lead, but a glorious one! 

 How much grander and nobler to fight the primeval 

 elements of the Northland than the enervating diseases 

 of the South! 



Meat came in very slowly. There were reports from 

 Kee-et-tee of the Eskimos being compelled to eat their 



