302 



At the present time the rifle is the weapon used, but previ- 

 ously it was the lance. Bow and arrow could not possibly be 

 used, as the arrows cannot wound the animal sufficiently, 

 owing to its thick hide and fur. The hunting thus developed 

 into a fight at close quarters with the bear, in which the 

 Jiunler not rarely received some hard knocks. Some of the 

 Eskimos I saw, especially Masaitsiak and Samik, bore frightful 

 scars on their bodies as the result of wounds from the claws 

 of the bears. 



The hunting of the musk-ox on the east coast of Elles- 

 mere Land is even more occasional. How this hunting was 

 carried on before the advent of the rifle , has not been clearly 

 explained. But it was even more impossible than in the bear- 

 hunting to employ the bow and arrow against the dense cover- 

 ing of thick, wooly hair of the musk ox. We are not aware 

 whether the Polar Eskimos knew or employed the lassoo or 

 not, but it would seem practically impossible to catch a musk- 

 ox in this manner, owing to the shape of the fore-part of the 

 body, with the head sloping forwards from the neck and its 

 thick horns likewise projecting downwards and forwards. There 

 can hardly be talk of any other weapon but the lance, and 

 presumably the method of hunting has been almost the same 

 as that employed by Cook and his two Eskimos whilst wintering 

 at Cape Sparbo in 1908 — 09, when they enclosed or drove the 

 musk-ox on to ground covered by nothing but stones. On 

 such a ground two legs are better than four and the hunter 

 can approach quite near to the awkward musk-ox and easily 

 evade its fury; in hunting these, dogs are also probably used. 

 Both Ihe bear and the musk-ox hunting are old among 

 the Polar Eskimos. This does not hold good, however, for the 

 reindeer hunting, which was first introduced by the immigrants 

 from the American side. A contributory reason, why they had 

 not previously troubled themselves about the profitable autumn 

 hunting of the reindeer in Olriks Fjord, may have been that 



