140 H. P. STeensBy. 
sected by large cracks, the seals are hunted at the cracks, and the kayak, which 
the hunter takes with him on a sledge, is used to secure the booty, and to cross 
the cracks. During the first months of summer, bird hunting is carried on, as 
also salmon-fishing in streams. Late in July, and in August, the inhabitants 
from the southern part of Norton Sound and many Delta Eskimo assemble 
at the mouth of the Yukon and arrange a battue to kill White Whales, when, 
in their kayaks (baidarks), they surround them and drive them in towards 
the flat shore. This White-Whale hunting, which is pursued both at the Yukon 
and the Kuskoquim, is mentioned by several authors, and appears to play an 
important réle, especially with the Delta tribes. 
When the White-Whale hunting is over, the people from Norton Sound 
go up into the mountains for the purpose of hunting the reindeer, and when 
well into October the reindeer hunt is over, and the ice has begun to form along 
the coast, a great abundance of a kind of small torsk is caught through holes 
in the ice, partly with hooks and partly with a kind of tin-bait. During the 
darkest period they live and feast on the stored up supplies of fish, reindeer 
meat and blubber, as long as these last. Nowadays, during the long, dark winter- 
nights, some seals are caught in nets which are set out in the sea at the head- 
lands of the coast. 
Ocitvie! states, regarding these coast inhabitants at Norton Sound, that 
“they are in every respect superior to any tribe of Indians with which I am 
acquainted.” Quite contrary to this favourable opinion are the accounts given 
of the standing of the Delta Eskimo. Thus, JacoBsEN writes that the inhabi- 
tants of the Delta between the Yukon and the Kuskoquim exhibit the highest 
degree of filthiness and, setting aside that as a rule they do not make fire and 
cook their food, live in wretched caves the interior of which, especially during 
spring-time, resembles a morass. From Mc Grats and J. H. Turner, who 
were staying there during 1889—1891, we have the following description®. “The 
inhabitants of the banks of the Lower Yukon are perhaps the most destitute 
Indians* in Alaska. They have no idea about personal cleanliness. During the 
regular flooding of the Yukon Delta in springtime they flee in their boats, in 
order, immediately on the fall of the water, to return to their miserable damp 
huts which really do not dry up the whole year through. Partly this and partly 
the almost exclusive fish diet,’’ the author thinks, causes diseases. 
A Swede*, whom Jacopsen found residing in the Delta as manager of 
a trading station, gave the following description of the inner Delta: “In the 
summer the monotonous plain of the Tundra is broken by numerous lakes and 
dams, and by silver shining rivers, brooks and tributaries, so that one relatively 
easily finds one’s way there, but in the winter land and water constitute one 
single monotonous surface covered by a white carpet which for hundreds of 
1 Ocitvig, p. 137, 
* LINDENKORL, p. 136. 
* Here “Eskimo Indians” are meant, American authors often using the term 
“Indians” in a sense also including the Eskimo. 
* Wotpt (Norwegian edition), p. 280. 
