OUT WITH THE SEAL-HUNTERS 



walrus-tusk harpoons; but there is no room for a 

 passenger in a kajak, and I had to content myself 

 with watching from a distance. And I had another 

 disillusionment, for Jerry shot a seal with his Win- 

 chester rifle. The Eskimo is fond of his rifle ; it 

 makes his hunting so much easier, but it takes a lot 

 of the picturesque away. And it is chasing the 

 animals away, too. It seemed a fairly natural thing 

 for an Eskimo to go after a walrus or a white bear 

 with kajak and harpoon ; the creature must have 

 felt that it was meeting its great enemy on equal 

 terms ; but when the rifle comes in the man has, 

 from the bear's or walrus's point of view, an almost 

 uncanny advantage. An unnatural element enters 

 into the hunt ; the animals became more wary ; they 

 are more frightened than ever by the smell of man ; 

 and away they go to the far north, where they can 

 fish and gambol unmolested. But happily from 

 the picturesque point of view your Eskimo is too 

 conservative to give up the ways of his fathers ; he 

 still likes to shoulder his kajak or balance it on his 

 head, and pick his way among the stones to the sea, 

 and launch it with its weird and ingenious equip- 

 ment all ready for seal-hunting. The harpoon lies 

 ready at his right; and as he wields his paddle 

 he is always on the alert to let drive at the seal 

 as it pops up for air. The skill with the harpoon 

 is a thing that the Eskimos have not lost, nor will 

 they lose it, I hope, till the end of time. When 

 I look at the harpoon that hangs upon my wall, 

 my mind travels back across the centuries to a 

 time when the Eskimos first learnt to hunt ; and I 

 imagine the hunter spearing the seal with a long 



straight spear. A seal is a ponderous beast, and 



205 



