MURDOCH.) FOWLING. 277 



four or five miles below Utkiavwlfi, and most of thoin fly up along the 

 smooth shore-ice to Pernyii or Point Barrow. Some flocks always fly 

 up among the hummocks of the land floe, and a few others turn east 

 ward below the village and continue their course to the northeast across 

 the land. 



On the days between the great flights there are always a few flocks 

 passing, and some days when there is no flight along shore they are 

 very abundant out at the open water, where the whale-men shoot them 

 in the intervals of whaling. When a great flight begins the people at 

 the village hasten out and form a sort of skirmish line across the shore 

 ice from the shore to the hummocks, a few sometimes stationing them 

 selves among the latter. They take but little pains to conceal them 

 selves, frequently sitting out on the open ice-field on sealing stools or 

 squares of bearskins. The ducks generally keep on their course with 

 out pacing much attention to the men, and in fact one may often get a 

 shot by running so as to head off an approaching flock. Firing, how 

 ever, frightens them and makes them rise to a considerable height, 

 often out of gunshot. Many ducks are taken with guns and bolas in 

 these flights. 



Rather late in the season the old squaws (Clangula hycmalis) pass 

 to the northeast in large flocks, but usually go so high than none are 

 taken. A good many of these, however, with a few eiders, geese, brant, 

 and loons, remain and breed on the tundra, and are occasionally shot 

 by the natives, though most of them are too busy with whaling and seal 

 and walrus hunting to pay much attention to birds. Small parties of 

 two or three lads or young men, sometimes with their wives, make short 

 excursions inland to the small streams and sand islands east of Point 

 Barrow, after birds and eggs, and the boys from the small camps along 

 the coast towards Woody Inlet are always on the lookout for eggs and 

 small birds, such as they can kill with their bows and arrows or catch 

 in snares. They say that the parties which go east, and those which 

 visit the rivers in summer, get many eggs and find plenty of ducks, 

 geese, and swans, which have molted their flight feathers so that they 

 are unable fly. 



About the end of July the return migration of the ducks begins. At 

 this season the flocks, which are generally smaller and more compact 

 than in the spring, come from the east along the northern shore, and 

 cross out to sea at the isthmus of Pernyfi, where the natives assem 

 ble in large numbers to shoot them as well as to meet with the Nuna- 

 tanmiun. All the people who have been scattered along the coast in 

 small camps gradually collect at this season at Pernyfi, and the return 

 ing eastern parties generally stop there two or three, days; while, after 

 they have brought their families back to the village, the men frequently 

 walk up to Peruyu for a day or two of duck shooting. The tents are 

 pitched just in the bend of Elson Hay, and north of them is a narrow 

 place in the saudspit over which the ducks often pass. Here the na- 



