160 GREENLAND SEAL. 



The Greenlander now hastes to smite it with his 

 ong lance ; thus he keeps darting at it till it is quite 

 spent, when he kills it outright with his small lance ; 

 lastly, he blows it up like a bladder, that it may 

 swim the more easily after his Kajak. In this 

 exercise he is exposed to the most and greatest dan- 

 ger of his life. For if the line should entangle 

 itself, as it easily may in its sudden and violent 

 motion, or if it should catch hold of the Kajak, or 

 of an oar, or the hand, or even the neck, as it some- 

 times does in windy weather, or if the Seal should 

 turn suddenly to the other side of the boat, it cannot 

 be otherwise than that the Kajak must be overturned, 

 and drawn down under water. On such desperate 

 ccasions the poor Greenlander stands in need of 

 all his art to disentangle himself from the string, 

 and raise himself up from under water several times 

 successively. Nay, when he imagines himself to 

 be out of all danger, and comes too near the dying 

 Seal, it may still attack him ; and a female Seal that 

 has young, instead of flying the field, will sometimes 

 fly at its pursuer in the most vehement rage, and 

 do him a mischief, or bite a hole in his Kajak, that 

 he must sink."* 



It would appear that this species is occasionally 

 a visitor on our British shores, probably borne 

 along in the fields of ice in which it delights. This 

 belief is grounded on the fact that two crania, be- 

 longing to Dr Riley, of individuals captured in the 



Crantz, Greenland, p. 154. 



