MURDOCH.] SEAL HUNTING. 271 



Later in the winter the seals resort to very inconsiderable cracks 

 among the hummocks for air, and nets are set hanging around these 

 iTiicks, so that a seal can not approach, the crack without being caught. 

 There was such a crack just in the edge of the rough land floe, not half 

 a mile from Utkiavwlfl, in February, 1883, from which two men took 

 several seals, visiting the nets every day or two. Those men who do 

 not go off on the deer hunt keep one or more seal nets set all winter, 

 either in this way or in the third method, which can be practiced only 

 after the daylight has come back, when the ice is thick. At this sea- 

 sou there are frequently to be found among the, hummocks what the 

 natives call i glus, dome-shaped snow houses about (! feet in diameter 

 and 2 or 3 feet high, with a smooth round hole in the top, and commu 

 nicating with the water. These are undoubtedly the same as the snow 

 burrows described by Kumlieu, 1 which the female seal builds to bring 

 forth her young in. 2 They are curious constructions, looking astonish 

 ingly like a man s work. The natives told me that nets set at these 

 places were for the capture of young seals (netyiaru). It appears that 

 these houses are the property of a single female only until her young 

 one is able to take to the water, as a net is kept set at one of these 

 holes, as well as I could understand, sometimes capturing several seals. 

 The net is set flat under the hole, the corners being drawn out by cords 

 let down through small holes in a circle round the main opening, through 

 which the net is drawn. A seal rising to the surface runs his head 

 through the meshes of the net. The small holes and sometimes the 

 middle one are carefully covered with slabs of snow. 



The officers of the revenue steamer Coricin, who made the sledge 

 journey along the northeast coast of Siberia in the early summer of 

 1881, saw seal nets set in this way, flat, under air holes in the ice. with 

 a hole for each corner of the net. When a seal was caught the net was 

 drawn up through the middle hole with a hooked pole. 3 In 1883 they 

 began setting these nets at Point Barrow about March 4, and probably 

 about the same date, the, year before, though we did not happen to ob 

 serve this method of netting until considerably later. 



In June and July, when the ice becomes rotten and worn into holes, 

 the seals &quot; haul out&quot; to bask in the sun, and are then stalked and shot. 

 They are exceedingly wary at this season. The seal usually taken in 

 the methods above described is the rough or ringed seal (Phoca fcetida), 

 but in 188L a single inale ribbon seal (Ilistriophoca fasciata) was netted, 

 and in 1882 a native shot one at the breathing hole, but it was carried 

 away by the current before he could secure it. The natives said that 

 they sometimes caught the harbor seal (P. vitulina) in the shore nets in 

 Elson Bay. The bearded seal (Eriguathus barbatus), whose skin is 

 especially prized for making harpoon lines, boot soles, umiak covers, 



1 Contributions, p. 57. 



* Hull. Arctic Researches, pp. 507 and 578, with diagrams. 



Hooper, Corwiu Report, p. 25. 



