340 OUR ARCTIC PROVINCE. 



owing to the day being warmer and drier than usual, that, when 

 touching it with my foot, great patches of hair and fur scaled off. 

 This is rather exceptionally rapid metamorphosis — it will, however, 

 take place in every instance, within an hour, or an hour and a half 

 on these warm days, after the first blow is struck, and the seal is 

 quiet in death ; hence no time is lost by a prudent toyone in di- 

 recting the removal of the skins as rapidly as the seals are knocked 

 down and dragged out. If it is a cool day, after bleeding the first 

 "pod" which has been prostrated in the manner described, and 

 after carefully drawing the slain from the heap in which they have 

 fallen, so that the bodies will spread over the ground just free 

 from touching one another, they turn to and strike down another 

 "pod ;" and so on, until a whole thousand or two are laid out, or 

 the drove, as corralled, is finished. The day, however, must be raw 

 and cold for this wholesale method. Then, after killing, they turn 

 to work and skin ; but if it is a warm day every pod is skinned as 

 soon as it is knocked down. 



The labor of skinning is exceedingly severe, and is trying even 

 to an expert, demanding long practice ere the muscles of the back 

 and thighs are so developed as to permit a man to bend down to, 

 and finish well, a fair day's work. The knives used by the natives 

 for skinning are ordinaiy kitclien or case-handle butcher-knives. 

 They are sharpened to cutting edges as keen as razors, but some- 

 thing about the skins of the seal, perhaps fine comminuted sand 

 along the abdomen, so dulls these knives, as the natives work, that 

 they are obliged to whet them constantly. 



The body of the seal, preparatory to skinning, is rolled over 

 and balanced squarely on its back ; then the native makes a single 

 swift cut through the skin down along the neck, chest, and belly, 

 from the lower jaw to the root of the tail : he uses for this purpose 

 his long stabbing-knife.* The fore and hind flippers are then suc- 

 cessively lifted, as the man straddles a seal and stoojDS down to 



* When turning the stunned and senseless carcasses, tlie only physical dan- 

 ger of which the sealers run the slightest risk, during the whole circuit of 

 their work, occurs thus : at this moment the prone and quivering body of the 

 " hoUuschak " is not wholly inert, perhaps, though it is nine times out of ten; 

 and as the native takes hold of a fore flipper to jerk the carcass over on to its 

 back, the half-brained seal rouses, snaps suddenly and viciously, often biting 

 the hands or legs of unwary skinners : they then come leisurely and imcon- 

 cernedly iip into the surgeon's office at the village, for bandages, etc. A few 



