An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 79 
which also betakes itself outside the ice-edge. The Arctic Right Whale (Ba- 
laena mysticetus) which was hunted formerly by the Eskimo has long been of 
no importance along these coasts. 
As regards the economic life of the Baffinlanders the year is divided 
into two principal parts, a short period with open salt and fresh waters, 
which is spent in the interior for the purpose of hunting reindeer and 
eatching salmon, and a long period which embraces about three quarters of 
the year, during which the sea is covered with ice. In the latter period 
hunting the Ringed Seal (Phoca foetida) is the chief means of subsistence, and 
the movements of the settlement depend on the movements of the game. 
With the exception of a few places where they travel to the ice-edge to 
carry on walrus hunting, the Baffinlanders live throughout the winter on 
the ice and are not dependent on the open sea for their livelihood’. 
It should be remembered that the inhabitants of Fury and Hecla 
Strait are most closely connected with the Melville Peninsula, and that 
the west coast of Baffin Land towards Boothia Gulf and Prince Regent 
Strait and also towards Fox Basin is uninhabited or rarely visited, while 
the eastern coasts have a more constant Eskimo-population. Boas has 
established a long series of groups or tribes, each of which has its principal 
residence in one of the larger indentations, and among which the inhabitants 
of Cumberland Sound, the so-called Oqomiut, are the most characteristic. 
According to his statements there must be altogether about a thousand 
Baffinlanders on the north, east, and south coasts. As regards their culture 
he gives as a type the Oqomiut group around Cumberland Sound, or more 
properly that portion of them whose home is on the north side of the 
sound, because the western inhabitants, the Talirpingmiut, spend so great a 
part of the year around Nettilling Lake that they approach an inland tribe 
in their mode of living. 
In his maps of Baffin Land Boas gives the different settlements for 
four seasons of the year, which he calls spring, summer, autumn and winter, 
On comparing, on Boas’s map of Cumberland Sound, the position of the 
autumn and winter settlements it is seen that there is hardly any difference 
beyond the fact that the latter have been moved further out on the ice 
or skerries. As the result of the summer reindeer-hunting is not so con- 
siderable that a large supply can be stored for winter use, it is necessary 
for the Eskimo to begin seal hunting as soon as the sea is ice-covered. The 
first weeks are spent near the coast, because it is dangerous to venture too 
far at this time of year, when the ice easily breaks up; at this period 
the Ringed Seal is caught in openings in the ice caused by currents, and at 
holes kept open by the movements of an enclosed iceberg; later on, when 
the iceberg freezes fast, the Ringed Seal must be sought further out, where 
it is taken especially by the Maupok method. In the month of March the 
snow burrows in which the seals have brought forth their young are sought; 
1 Boas, II, p. 461. 
