THE COMMON SEAL. . 63 



boat. They beat down the animals with clubs or 

 staves,, in the manner before described. The fisher- 

 men assert, that sometimes more than three hundred 

 Seals, young and old, have been killed in one of 

 these rencounters*. 



The modes of pursuing and destroying Seals, 

 adopted by the inhabitants of Greenland,, Finland, 

 and other extreme northern regions, are very vari- 

 ous. Sometimes they are shot from behind rocks, 

 or immense masses of ice. Very frequently they are 

 killed in the water with long harpoons. They are 

 often watched, when coming to breathe through 

 holes which they make in the ice; and as soon as 

 their head is seen, they are struck by a kind of lance, 

 or javelin. When the animals, in the spring of the 

 year, lie on the ice, a man, clothed in a Seal's skin, 

 and having a lance in his hand, will frequently creep 

 along upon his belly, like a Seal, till one of them 

 comes within his reach, when he immediately 

 plunges his lance into the animal's body, and kills 

 it+. 



Seals are so very tenacious of life, (unless they 

 happen to be struck on the nose, which is almost 

 immediate death to them,) that, when severely 



* Martin's Western Islands, p. 62. 



f Acerbi's Travels in Lapland, &c. i. p. ISS.Egede's Description 

 of Greenland, p. 104 106. 



wounded, 



