440 SEALING EXPEDITIONS BY LAND. 



icebergs, which during gales of wind threaten every 

 instant to overwhelm their fragile barks. Not uufre- 

 quently, n.oreover, when exploring extensive ice-fields, in 

 search of seals, and when distant from their boats, they 

 are overtaken by thick weather, or snow-storms, which 

 render their situation j^erilous in the extreme. It is on 

 record, indeed, that during one particular season the 

 crews of no fewer than fifteen boats from the parish of 

 Wora alone thus perished miserably, or were engulfed 

 in the waves ! 



In the winter time the seal-hunter also makes extended 

 excursions on the fixed ice, — that firmly attached to the 

 land; or on some enormous "floe," that after having 

 been driven hither and thither by the waves has at length 

 made a lodgment on the shore. Several individuals, pro- 

 visioned for a few days, and well provided with guns and 

 harpoons, usually join company on these occasions. The 

 seals are commonly found lying at the very edge of the 

 fixed ice, or on the drifted " floe," as the case may be, 

 and often in herds of a hundred or more; but if the ice 

 does not extend very far from land, the animals, the 

 old ones at least, are exceedingly wary and difiicult of 

 approach, and on the slightest apjiearance of danger, such 

 as the sight of a man, or of a boat, or even the cries of 

 birds which denote peril, at once plunge headlong into 

 the sea. They are said, indeed, to be so afraid of the 

 land, that if when resting on an ice-field it di'ifts to 

 within even a gun-shot of the shore, they will at once 

 desert it, and move off elsewhere. The success of the 

 hunters, nevertheless, is often very considerable. It is 

 recorded, in a Swedish newspaper of the 30th March, 

 1860, that during the preceding week a party of men from 

 the hamlet of Norrboda had " clubbed to death upwards 

 of two hundred seals." 



Tlicse sealing-expeditions by land, so to say, as well as 



