310 THE FRIENDLY ARCTIC 



can scratch him better. The Arctic is different. It takes patience 

 and an elaborate technique to get a seal near Prince Patrick Island. 

 In the account of his journey in 1853 to the very place where we 

 were now, McClintock, our only predecessor, said he had seen 

 several seals, "but of course we were unable to secure them." It 

 was formerly supposed that the auktok and mauttok methods de- 

 scribed above could be used only by Eskimo hunters. But white 

 men can use them equally. 



In the fall hunting seals by the auktok method is often dan- 

 gerous, for they are lying on ice so thin and treacherous that the 

 hunter may break through, especially while trying to get the seal 

 from the hole after he is killed. In midwinter seals can seldom 

 be secured in this way because they do not crawl out on the ice. 

 From April to June we kill most of our seals by this method. 

 From June to September there is so much water on top of the ice 

 that the auktok necessitates wriggling, snake-fashion, through 

 pools of ice water from a few inches to a foot or more deep. This 

 is not only disagreeable, but the almost unavoidable splashing 

 may scare the seals. Therefore this is essentially a springtime 

 method of hunting. We get about a third of our seals by it, two 

 thirds by shooting them in open water. As said above, the maut- 

 tok method we keep in our minds merely as a standby. It is 

 used by Eskimos in midwinter on level, thick bay ice near land. 

 We would use it on the large expanses of fairly uniform ice found 

 far from land if any of these proved so extensive that we ran out 

 of food before we came to open sealing water. This has never 

 happened to us, though it appears from the narrative of other ex- 

 plorers that it would be likely to happen. But that is because 

 their travel methods were different from ours. 



Our method of selecting a route over sea ice differs funda- 

 mentally from that of other explorers because our method of 

 subsistence differs fundamentally. The Bible tells that the Is- 

 raelites were guided across the desert by a pillar of cloud by day. 

 The inference is that they traveled directly towards the pillar of 

 cloud. As we traverse the sea ice in winter we see all about us 

 pillars of cloud. If we are relying on the food in our sledges and 

 either believe that no seals exist in the vicinity or else do not 

 take any interest in them, then we avoid the pillars of cloud, 

 for we know that each is but the vapor rising from a patch of open 

 w^ter hindering progress. To avoid these is a great concern to 

 those who do not expect to profit by anything found in or near the 

 open water and who are struggling ahead slowly and laboriously 



