THE GOOSING 227 



birds or so left outside, and then the men stopped killing 

 and the children were turned into the big- ring- while the 

 elders stood outside, and each backed their own off- 

 spring : who could catch the most — a kind of game — one 

 choom against the other. So the children screamed 

 and snatched and sprawled, while the men shouted 

 and encouraged, and the women laughed fit to split 

 their sides. Poor geese ! they made a good show for 

 it, but they were all caught at last. 



I cannot say I liked all this. On the contrary, I felt 

 very unhappy. But there it was. 



Then the counting began. We had taken in the net 



alone, 



3300 brents, 

 13 bean, 

 12 white-fronted. 



Total, 3325 geese. 



Onaska kept the record, as the counting went on, with 

 notches on a stick. 



Then the geese were again subdivided and apportioned 

 out in heaps, so many to a choom. One point of much 

 interest for me was the fact that both our varieties of 

 brent, the light- and the dark-breasted, were represented 

 here. 



July igt/i. — It was so late by the time all this was 

 finished, being indeed somewhere about two o'clock in 

 the morning, that it was decided to leave all stowing 

 for a second visit. 



