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any other place in the same latitudes on the globe. This also 

 leads to better conditions for human life and also helps to ex- 

 plain why it is that human beings have here pushed farthest 

 up towards the pole. 



The chief conditions for Eskimo life have to be sought, 

 however, not on land but on the sea, and they concern the 

 marine mammals and the ice. The large whales, which still 

 visit the "North Water" now and then, though in earlier days 

 they must have been present in much greater numbers , have 

 never been of any great importance for the Polar Eskimos. The 

 latter have seized upon the carcases driven on land and revelled 

 in the rich quantities of flesh and blubber, but they have never 

 known how to carry on the systematic hunling of the large 

 animals. The narwhal and the white whale are common and 

 are hunted from the ice and from kayaks; but bolhiof these im- 

 portant animals go down in winter to more southerly latitudes. 

 The chief source of food for the Eskimos is however the wal- 

 rus, which is met with the whole year round. In the summer 

 time it can be seen lying in the sun on the ice-floes right 

 inside the fjords and at the islands ; in the autumn when the 

 fjords are frozen it is met with outside the ice-margin, and 

 through the winter it keeps in the always partially open water 

 in the middle of the North Water due south of Smith Sound 

 and Cape Alexander. 



The commonest of the seals is however the fjord seal 

 (Phoca foetida, esk. netchiki, which occurs throughout the 

 whole year. Phoca barbata (esk. ugsuki is also found here bul 

 in much smaller numbers. It is the first-named, the fjord 

 seal, which comes into the Ijords in winter under the even 

 winter- ice and gives rise to the important ^'Maupok" hunling 

 at the breathing holes, which this seal constantly makes in the 

 ice. As the Polar Eskimos also hunt the walrus from the ice- 

 margin in the winter, the Maupok hunting is however not of 

 such importance here as is the case amongst some of the 



