THE REINDEER HUNT 



once it is properly "mended," can shoot with the 

 most deadly aim. It seems to suit him the better for 

 the hammering it gets. It is no easy matter to get a 

 sight of this curious performance, because as soon as a 

 European comes walking along the hammering stops, 

 and nothing more than mere gun practice seems to 

 be going on. The Eskimos are rather shy of their 

 characteristic little ways ; and, of course, to European 

 eyes the gun was good enough to begin with, and the 

 hammering might easily be a laughing matter. As 

 the days passed onjtowards Easter, and every day I 

 saw the same gun-practice, and gun-cleaning, and 

 cartridge-filling, I was surprised that there were no 

 accidents ; the people seem so careless of their fire- 

 arms that any one might well expect to hear of 

 several fatalities every year. But as I look back over 

 the eight years that I have known the Eskimos, I 

 can count the gun accidents on the fingers of one 

 hand, and I only know of one that ended fatally. 

 The fact is that their carelessness is more seeming 

 than real, though they do run the most foolish risks 

 at times. 



While an Eskimo is engaged on the cleaning of 

 his gun it is quite a likely thing for the wad to stick. 

 The man pokes a plug of greasy tow into the 

 barrel, and the harder he pokes the tighter it wedges. 

 Perhaps he remembers to put the ramrod in at the 

 other end of the barrel, and push the wad out the 

 way it went in ; perhaps he heats it red hot and 

 makes it burn its way through ; but as likely as not, 

 especially if he is an inexperienced young fellow, he 

 loses patience, and loads his gun and tries to fire the 

 obstruction out. I knew a man at Hebron who 

 tried this dodge. The wad was too tightly jammed 



