330 A Musk -Ox Hunt. 



When closely pressed, the musk-oxen do not hesitate to throw 

 themselves from the steepest and deepest precipices, and the natives 

 speak of occasions where they have secured them in this manner 

 without wasting powder or lead, finding. them dead at the foot of the 

 descent. Sir James Clarke Ross had a personal observation of this 

 kind in one of his arctic expeditions. 



McClintock once saw a cow on Melville Island, in the Parry 

 archipelago, which was of a pure white color, an albino sort of devia- 

 tion that is known to occur among the buffalo of the plains at rare 

 intervals. She was, however, accompanied by a black calf. This 

 Melville Island is abundantly peopled with these oxen r not less than 

 one hundred and fourteen being shot within a year by the crews of 

 two ships wintering there. When inhabiting islands, they do not 

 seem to cross from one to another, as the reindeer constantly do when 

 the channel is frozen over, and even confine their annual migrations 

 to very limited areas. Different writers disagree as to whether they 

 can be called migratory in the strict sense of the word. If white men 

 are hunting them without dogs, they may station themselves about a 

 herd, close in to seventy or eighty yards, and then, by picking off 

 the restless ones first, so bewilder the remainder that, with fair luck, 

 they may secure them all. There are several instances of such 

 methods being tolerably successful. When the temperature reaches 

 the extremes of the bitter winter weather, as from — 6o° to — yo° 

 Fahrenheit, the musk-oxen and reindeer herds can be located, at 

 from six to seven miles distance, by the cloud of moisture which 

 hangs over them, formed by their condensing breath, and from 

 favorable heights at even fifteen to twenty miles. Even at these 

 extreme distances, the native hunters claim that they can discern the 

 difference between musk-oxen and reindeer by some varying peculi- 

 arities of their vapors. 



I remember being one of a party of six — five Innuits besides my- 

 self — that chased on a fresh trail of a small herd of musk-oxen from 

 about nine o'clock in the morning until night-fall, which was four in 

 the afternoon. We went at a gait which would be called a good 

 round "dog-trot" for the whole time (except one small rest of five 

 minutes). This is much easier than one would imagine, with a couple 

 of dogs harnessed to you to tow you along; yet I confess I was 

 completely fagged out, after this little run of not less than forty or 



