THE SPRING FLITTING 



flog their dogs on days like that, and that no mis- 

 sionary would travel with a driver who used the 

 whip. Jakobus's dogs were in luck's way ; there 

 was a keen air to sharpen them up, and no breath of 

 wind to hamper them, and the ice was like glass. 

 " In three hours we shall be there," said Jakobus. 

 " Where ? " I asked him. 



" Sillutalik, 1 ' he answered : and then with a grin, 

 " Katro, twenty miles." 



" Katro " was an aside for my benefit : it was 

 Jakobus's way of saying " Cut-throat," which is the 

 schooner folks' grotesque name for the channel that 

 he favours for the spring seal hunt. He was fidget- 

 ing to be off, so I took my photograph, and shouted 

 my " Aksunai " as he called to his dogs and set his 

 caravan bowling over the ice. Three or four hours 

 later, I suppose, he was pitching his calico tent on 



i the driest part of the sloppy foreshore at Sillutalik, 

 with his mind full of dreams of thorough Eskimo 

 happiness dreams of the splendid seal hunt that lay 

 before him. 



A volume might easily be written about seal- 

 hunting, for it fills a very big share of the Eskimo 



| life. The names and habits of the different seals, the 



i ways of catching them, the uses to which seals are 

 put these are things about which an Eskimo can 

 talk for hours. Food, clothes, boots, lamp-oil, 

 window panes these are only a few of the com- 

 monest of the things that the all-useful seal provides, 



I and the list of out-of-the-way things is almost end- 

 less. I found the cooper's wife industriously making 

 boots at a time when the people were very short of 



i reindeer sinew ; but it was no secret store of ivalo 

 sinew) that she had. Before my very eyes she cut 



243 



