PAIXriXGS OF GREENLAND ESKIMO 



215 



The right portion of the painting, reahstic in the extreme, repre- 

 sents the twilight before the approach of the long night, the dramatic 

 interest resting in an encounter between an Eskimo himter and a ])olar 

 bear. The hunter has left his sledge and, accompanied by his team, has 

 followed in the chase. He has used his arrows and is now near enough 

 to give a thrust with his lance, the bear's attention being held by the 

 dogs. 



That part of the painting at the extreme left tells the Eskimo's method 

 of stalking prey. In the foreground on an ice-floe a hunter, harpoon in 

 hand, is crawling slowly toward two ring seals, which lie basking in the 



Copyright 1908 by Frank Wilbert Stokes. 



ESKIMO STALKING THE SEAL. 



Fiom the Painting on the North \Yall. 



sun near their hole. Eskimo hunters have great skill in giving decoy 

 sounds. They can make cautious approach to gulls l)y waving a gull's 

 wing in the air, while whistling the bird's notes; they can allay the 

 suspicions of seals by lying flat on the ice and waving a foot in imita- 

 tion of a seal's head, while giving the characteristic calls of the seals. 

 Beyond the seal hunter in the distance rises above the ice of the glacier, 

 a bell-shaped elevation of land which the Eskimo knows as a "nunatak." 

 Still farther to the left towers an iceberg, while over all is the dawning 

 light of the summer that is being ushered in by Sukh-eh-nukh, the sun 

 goddess. 



