A Musk -Ox Hunt. 325 



temperate zones. The natives told me they had kept calves alive for 

 a few days, but they sank so rapidly they killed them for food. 



Before the Eskimo hunters were provided with the fire-arms of 

 civilization, procured in trade with the Hudson's Bay Company or 

 American whale-ships, they used the bow and arrow or the lance, 

 dashing fearlessly past the brutes as they buried the sharpened bone 

 lance-head deep in som^ vital part. In the olden times, one of their 

 tests of manly courage was for the hunter to pass within the circle 

 of animals and return, backward and forward, killing one of the oxen 

 at each passage. Of such feats, the old gray-haired men of the tribes 

 still boast. 



One old Iwillik Innuit — so I was told by his tribe, and they are 

 not given to vain boasting, — while traveling with dogs and sledge 

 from one village to another, during his younger days, came suddenly 

 and unexpectedly upon a couple of musk-oxen that had strayed far 

 from their usual haunts. Unhitching his dogs from the sledge, he 

 soon brought the oxen to bay. His only weapon was a " snow- 

 knife." a kind of long-bladed butcher-knife which they use to cut 

 the blocks of snow in constructing heir houses of that material. 

 Nothing daunted, however, he courageously attacked them, and in a 

 few minutes had secured both. 



The danger from these formidable and ferocious-looking brutes 

 is undoubtedly more apparent than real, judging from the few acci- 

 dents that occur. The dogs are frequently killed by being tossed in 

 the air or pawed to death as already described. The musk-bulls 

 are prevented from following up a dog's trailing harness-line by 

 attaching a toggle noose where the trace joins the harness at the 

 root of the dog's tail when the traces are separated from the dogs 

 before they are slipped for the chase ; also, a sure way is to fold the 

 trace into a " bundle noose " until it rests on the dog's back. The 

 trained Eskimo dog never barks in the presence of game until lib- 

 erated from his master's hands. 



The musk-ox of the Arctic is only about two-thirds the size of 

 the bison, or American buffalo, but in appearance he is nearly as 

 large, owing to his immense heavy coat of long hair that covers him 

 down below the knees, as if he were carrying a load of black brush. 

 As his generic name (Ovibos moschatus) imports, he seems to form 

 a connection between the ox and the sheep. His peculiar covering 

 21A 



