CARNIVORA. 93 



The voice of the animal when old, is a hoarse, gruff bark ; when 

 young, a peculiarly plaintive whine. " With a good glass," says 

 Dr, Kane,* * you may study these animals in their natural habit- 

 udes, undisturbed by suspicion. As thus seen, in the centre of a 

 large floe, and within retreating distance of his hole, the seal is a 

 perfect picture of solitary enjoyment, rolling not unlike a horse, 

 stretching his hide, awkwardly spreading out his flippers, and 

 twisting his rump towards his head. Again he will wriggle 

 about in the most grotesque manner; the sailors call it 'squirm, 

 ing,' every now and then rubbing his head against the snow. 

 The shapes of a seal, or rather his aspects, are full oi strange 

 variety. At a side view, with his caudal end slued round 10 the 

 side from you, and his head lifted suspiciously in the air, he is 

 the exnct image of a dog, cluen de mer. During his wriggles, he 

 resembles a great snail; a little while after, he turns his back to 

 you, and rises up on his side flippers, like a couching hunter, pre- 

 paring for a shot, the very image of an Esquimaux." The seals 

 are proverbially shy. The Esquimaux and Greenlanders, to 

 whom these animals are of inestimable importance, as furnishing 

 them with the chief means of subsistence, are from earliest youth, 

 trained to the pursuit of them, and look upon the most successful 

 hunters of them as their great men. "No one can pass for a 

 right Greenlander who cannot catch seals." This is not 

 strange, considering the manifold benefits furnished the northern 

 tribes by these animals. The boat, or kajah in which they brave 

 the violence of a northern sea, and the perils of the chase, con- 

 sists of the skin of the seal placed over a light frame work of 

 wood. The same skin furnishes the material for his dress; the 

 flosh of the animal supplies him with his " most palatable and 

 substantial food ; the fat gives him oil for lamp-light, chamber 

 and kitchen fire. He can sew better with fibres of seal's sinews 

 than with thread or silk. Of the skins of the entrails, he makes 

 the windows of his house, curtains for his tents, his shirts; and 

 part of the bladders they use at their harpoons, and he makes 

 train bottles of the maw or stomach." Seal skins and oil are to 

 him also important articles of commerce. The fishing com- 

 mences in autumn, and is practised by means of nets stretched 

 across narrow sounds where the seals are in the habit of swimming. 

 Only the young ones can be taken in these nets ; the old ones 

 are shot, or else the boatmen enter the recesses of the animals at 

 night, with torches and bludgeons, and despatch them, winch they 

 do easily with a slight blow on the forehead or muzzle. 



* Grinnell Arctic Expedition. 



