MURDOCH.] FOWLING. 2 
four or five miles below Utkiavwin, and most of them fly up along the 
smooth shore-ice to Pernya or Point Barrow. Some flocks always fly 
up among the hummocks of the land floe, and a few others turn east- 
ward below the village and continue their course to the northeast across 
the land. 
On the days between the great flights there are always a few flocks 
passing, and some days when there is no flight along shore they are 
very abundant out at the open water, where the whalemen shoot them 
in the intervals of whaling. When a great flight begins the people at 
the village hasten out and form a sort of skirmish line across the shore 
ice from the shore to the hummocks, a few sometimes stationing them- 
selves among the latter. They take but little pains to conceal them- 
selves, frequently sitting out on the open ice-field on sealing stools or 
squares of bearskins. The ducks generally keep on their course with- 
out paying much attention to the men, and in fact one may often get a 
shot by running so as to head off an approaching flock, Firing, how- 
ever, frightens them and makes them rise to a considerable height, 
often out of gunshot. Many ducks are taken with guns and bolas in 
these flights. 
Rather late in the season the old squaws (Clangula hyemalis) pass 
to the northeast in large flocks, but usually go so high than none are 
taken. A good many of these, however, with a few eiders, geese, brant, 
and loons, remain and breed on the tundra, and are occasionally shot 
by the natives, though most of them are too busy with whaling and seal 
and walrus hunting to pay much attention to birds. Small parties of 
two or three lads or young men, sometimes with their wives, make short 
excursions inland to the small streams and sand islands east of Point 
Barrow, after birds and eggs, and the boys from the small camps along 
the coast towards Woody Inlet are always on the lookout for eggs and 
small birds, such as they can kill with their bows and arrows or catch 
in snares. They say that the parties which go east, and those which 
visit the rivers in summer, get many eggs and find plenty of ducks, 
geese, and swans, which have molted their flight feathers so that they 
are unable fly. : 
About the end of July the return migration of the ducks begins. At 
this season the flocks, which are generally smaller and more compact 
than in the spring, come from the east along the northern shore, and 
cross out to sea at the isthmus of Pernyt, where the natives assem- 
ble in large numbers to shoot them as well as to meet with the Nuna- 
tanmiun. All the people who have been scattered along the coast in 
small camps gradually collect at this season at Pernyt, and the return- 
ing eastern parties generally stop there two or three days; while, after 
they have brought their families back to the village, the men frequently 
walk up to Pernyti for a day or two of duck shooting. The tents are 
pitched just in the bend of Elson Bay, and north of them is a narrow 
eplace in the sandspit over which the ducks often pass. Here the na- 
