TENT LIFE 



to a man to see the head come up and gaze and sink, 

 all in a moment, in an unexpected quarter, so that he 

 has hardly time to train his gun upon it ; but, how- 

 ever aggravating the seals may be, an Eskimo does 

 not lose his temper over his hunting ; and as for 

 swearing why, the Eskimo language contains no 

 oaths, and the few mild remarks that an Eskimo can 

 make in his own tongue, such as " Kappianarmek " 

 (how dreadful), or " Ai-ai-kulluk " (that miserable 

 thing), he makes where they can be applied literally. 

 Useless expletives are as foreign to his nature as 

 they are to his vocabulary. 



Not all the families that flit in the springtime go 

 seal-hunting among the breaking ice. There are 

 some whose thoughts turn to the trout that have 

 spent the winter in the ponds among the hills, and 

 that are waking from their lethargy for the spring 

 run to the sea ; and so a good many of the sledges 

 are piled high with nets amid all the other luggage, 

 and the drivers turn the dogs' noses west instead of 

 eastward when the sledges reach the mouth of the 

 bay. As far as money goes, trout-fishing is a more 

 paying game than seal-hunting ; it is always fairly 

 certain, and salt trout fetches a good price at the 

 store. 



The favourite way is to spread nets in the 

 shallow water where the big rivers run into the 

 sea, and clear them after every tide. 



Clearing the nets sounds a small thing, but it 

 means more than just taking out the great wriggling 

 fish ; if a man wants to have a good haul every time, 

 he needs to clear away every fragment of weed, and 

 that will take him the best part of the day. Floating 

 pieces of ice must be towed to a safe distance, and 



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