130 H. P. SteEnsBy. 
for the purpose of hunting or fishing. The sledge road along the Noatak and 
Colville rivers was used right down to our own days by the Kotzebue people 
on their trading journeys to the Mackenzie people. 
The animal world and the original hunting conditions are described from 
Point Barrow by Murpocn and Ray, who were staying there during the years 
1881—1883 as the U.S. A.’s members of the International Polar Exploration. 
Four species of seal occur, of which the Ribbon Seal (Phoca fasciata), the Har- 
bour Seal (P. vitulina), and especially the Bearded Seal (Phoca barhata), the 
skin of which is highly valued for making boat covers, are rather few in number, 
while the Ringed Seal (Phoca foetida), on the other hand, occurs in abundance 
and at all seasons of the year. During the spring and summer it is found between 
floating cakes of ice, and is then shot from the umiak with a rifle, but originally 
it was pursued in a kayak, and a small harpoon was used, which was thrown 
with the throwing board, the shaft of which, by placing itself perpendicularly 
in the water during the flight of the seal, replaced the float. During the winter 
Maupok hunting was practised, and during the spring seals were captured by 
the Utok method, or hunted at the cracks in the ice; in addition, net-hunting 
under the ice was largely carried on. In the darkest period the net is set parallel 
to a crack in the ice, along which it hangs down like a curtain. A man must 
always be present to watch the net, and to entice the seals by scratching on 
the ice, or by whistling gently. Murpocu mentions a hunting party which cap- 
tured upwards of 100 seals during one single night, and he knew of a man catch- 
ing 30 seals during one night. When daylight begins to come back the net 
is set horizontally under the breathing holes to catch the seal when it dips down 
perpendicularly into the water, after having blown. These methods of net hunt- 
ing, which possibly had corresponding methods among some Hast-Eskimo 
groups, such as the northern West-Greenlanders and the Angmagsaliks, and 
probably are employed also at the Mackenzie, must, according to NELSON, occur 
southernmost in Kotzebue Sound, but are not met with south of Bering Strait, 
where, however, the net is used in open water. 
These methods of hunting chiefly apply to the Ringed Seal. During the 
summer the Bearded Seal is captured from the umiak with a harpoon of the 
same size as that used for walrus hunting. The walruses are rather plentiful in the 
season of open water, and are pursued in umiaks, especially in September, when 
the sea begins to be filled with floating cakes of ice. The walrus hunting is or 
was, however, of slight importance in comparison with the hunting of the Bow- 
head Whale, which, on account of its size, could yield an enormous quantity — 
of meat, blubber, and whalebone. Previously, before the American whale-hunt- 
ing had reduced the number of the animals, as many as 20 were killed yearly 
at Point Barrow; but in the two years 1882 and 1883, only two were killed in 
all, In no other place in the whole of the Eskimo region has whale hunting . 
played so important a réle for the Eskimo as along this stretch of coast from 
Point Barrow to Kotzebue Sound, and in no other place has hunting from umiaks 
been so well organized and so well pursued. When, in the middle of April, the 
ice began to form open channels, the whales arrived and continued their journey 
