88 A Fox Caught in His Own Trap. [Odobor, is64. 



through the night. T\yo of the Innuits went forward to follow up the 

 tracks to which some of the dogs had continued to keep close. 



Hall, with Ou-e-la and Ar-too-a, turned aside to visit a reindeer 

 deposit. Noticing the tracks of a fox, on close examination they found 

 a hole through a snow-bank which covered a cache, and on loosening 

 some of the stones discovered a fox alongside of the meat within. He 

 was (lead and frozen hard as a rock. The hungry fellow had burrowed 

 through the drift and forced his gaunt body in through a very small 

 hole between the stones. But he had so gorged himself that it was 

 impossible for him to get back through the hole by which he had 

 entered. The meat was left untouched, for the Innuits cannot eat 

 what a fox has meddled with. Ou-e-la led the way to another cache, 

 which he opened, but only by a very severe hammering of one stone 

 upon another to unloose the mass, locked up as it was by the ice A 

 bountiful re[)ast was made by the hungry travelers from the best parts 

 of the meat, while the legs and head were re-cached for future use. 



Hall notes that the custom of the Innuits when making these 

 deposits is to throw down the carcass of the slain deer, and then to place 

 upon and around it the -head, legs, shoulders, and saddle ; covering the 

 whole with a heavy pile of stones. The frozen mass soon becomes so 

 solid that any one but an Innuit would expect to separate it only by 

 blasting, or by the use of the pick and the crow-bar. The Innuit perse- 

 veringly divides it by using a wedge-shaped stone, on which he strikes 

 his ])l<iws with another often weighing 100 pounds. 



After visiting this deposit, Ou-e-la catching up the distant sound 

 of the dogs, by the use of Hall's glass descried his companions about 

 four miles distant, standing by the side of a slain ox. The party again 

 slaking their thirst at a lakelet, the water of which, as usual, was 



