530 FAMILY 



known to be the resort of Seals, and after being set are lightly 

 covered with sea- weed. When the Seal, in creeping up on the 

 rock, comes in contact with the trigger the harpoon is released 

 and becomes lodged in the body of the unlucky animal.* 



6. Other methods. In shore- hunting the rifle is often resorted 

 to when other means are unavailing, or the Seals cannot be 

 approached sufficiently near to be dispatched in other ways. 

 The use of the harpoon and bladder, as employed by the Green- 

 lander, has already been described ; but the harpoon is also 

 used in other ways, not only by the Esquimaux, but by the 

 inhabitants of Northern Europe, especially, in former times, in 

 Scandinavia. It is employed mainly in winter, when the hunter, 

 usually attired in white, steals upon the Seal while asleep on the 

 ice, or lies in wait for it at its breathing-hole, striking it when it 

 comes to the surface to breathe. The Seal, when struck with 

 the harpoon, is allowed to descend beneath the ice, being held 

 by the line attached to the harpoon. The Seal soon becomes 

 weak from its struggles and is quickly compelled to come to the 

 surface to breathe, when it is easily dispatched and secured. 



The seal- club can of course be employed in shore-hunting 

 only when the Seals can be surprised at their favorite landing 

 places, to which, as already detailed, they sometimes repair in 

 herds of thousands. At such points, Schultz tells us, hundreds 

 of seal-hunters congregate by prearrangement and make a 

 combined attack upon the assembled herds of Seals, approach- 

 ing them stealthily from the sea under cover of darkness, and 

 by cutting off their retreat to the water make a wholesale 

 butchery of the unsuspecting multitude, sometimes destroying, 

 it is said, as many as fifteen thousand Seals in a Single night. 

 (See anted,, p. 515.) 



II. ICE-HTJNTINGK 1. In the Gulf of Bothnia. The prosecu- 

 tion of sealing voyages in vessels especially equipped for the 

 purpose dates back to at least the beginning of the seventeenth 

 century, but, as already stated, attained no great importance 

 until near the close of that century. A few vessels only, even 

 then, visited the great Arctic sealing- grounds, but in the Baltic 

 sealing voyages appear to have been for a long time prosecuted 

 with considerable regularity. Cneiff has left us a very partic- 

 ular account of the sealing business as carried on about 1750 

 in the Gulf of Bothnia ; it also forms one of the earliest de- 

 tailed histories of ice-hunting to which I have seen reference. 



*Game Birds and Wild Fowl, etc., pp. 427, 428. 



