THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 301 



Mecham's charting of it was by no means correct, but we saw also 

 that were we to attempt to revise its minute details our results 

 would not be much better than his, if at all. It was a question of 

 light. There is much fog at this season, and Mecham had evi- 

 dently done a good deal of his mapping in fog, with the inevitable 

 results. If we were going to attempt a revision of his work we 

 should have to do part of our work in fog also, and those portions 

 of the coast where he had sunlight would have been done by him 

 better than we could do them in fog; the only improvement we 

 could hope for would be here and there where our luck in weather 

 was better than his. Nor can any one with any reasonable ease 

 make a map of this coast in winter, for the land slopes so im- 

 perceptibly into the sea ice that so long as snow covers both alike, 

 their limits can be ascertained only by digging. A good map of 

 this coast can be made only when the land is free of snow, in late 

 June, July or in August. 



A few days confirmed Mecham's opinion of the absence of 

 game. Accordingly, we went offshore about ten or twelve miles 

 to where the landfast ice meets the moving pack, and there in the 

 open lead secured some seals. It is a curious fact, confirmed by the 

 experience of years besides this one, that bear tracks are absent in 

 spring north of the south end of Prince Patrick Island. This is 

 doubtless because seals in these latitudes and longitudes are in- 

 accessible to bears on account of the peculiar ice conditions, al- 

 though they are easily secured by the more skillful human hunter, 

 whose methods it is high time for us to describe. 



There is little originality about our methods of hunting seals — 

 we have borrowed them from the Eskimos unchanged except for 

 the omission of numerous superstitious practices which, though con- 

 sidered integral parts of the technique by the natives, present them- 

 selves to our minds as clearly adventitious. 



Obviously seals, where they exist, are found in one of three 

 situations — they are on top of the sea ice, under it, or in the open 

 water between the floes. Accordingly, there are three branches to 

 the method of the hunter. 



The simplest case is when you hunt seals in open water. On 

 arriving at the edge of a lead or other body of water you may 

 find dozens of seals swimming about within gunshot. We shoot 

 seals through the head, commonly, because a seal is more likely 

 to sink with a body wound, especially one that lets blood or water 

 into the lungs. In all seasons except summer nine killed seals 

 out of ten will float if shot through the head and perhaps seven 



