56 G. Holm. 



swallows the blubber, the line is hauled in, thereby causing the 

 piece of bone to turn at right angles in the gull's neck^). 



Gulls are also caught in snares fixed to a stick about one foot 

 long, which is fastened onto a stone (fig. 175). This trap is 

 placed on a piece of blubber at the margin of the shore, in such a 

 w^ay that the gins are just on the surface of the water, and a piece 

 of blubber is stuck in a little hole at the upper end of the stick. 

 When the gull has eaten the piece of blubber last mentioned, and 

 wants to peck at the blubber on which the trap stands, it is obliged 

 to stick its head through one of the gins, and is thus caught. 



Sea-fowl are caught from the kaiak with bird-darts, which 

 are cast with a throwing-stick (see pag. 47). Eggs and young are 

 taken from the steep sides of the rocks, a pursuit in which 

 the Greenlander displays an almost incredible agility and daring, 

 climbing in places where one could hardly deem it possible for a 

 man to get a food-hold. 



Other eggs, for instance, the eggs of the eider, are collected in 

 flat islands. 



In spring swans are now and then seen. They are caught by 

 pouring train-oil on the water. The swans are then unable to fly 

 up from the smooth surface, and so the kaiaks can come up, and 

 harpoon them. 



In former times the natives told us that they hunted, besides 

 the animals mentioned here, also whales, reindeer, hares and 

 musk-oxen. 



They said that whales were captured from umiaks, which 

 approached them by stealth, as they lay sleeping. In this kind of 

 hunting the men wore the 'spring coat' mentioned above (pag. 31). 

 The harpoons with which the whales were caught had a loose shaft 

 2 ft. long, and a toggle-head 8 inches long with point of stone. 

 To the toggle-head four skin floats were attached by a broad raw- 

 hide thong. When the whale had been killed, it was towed to the 

 place where it stranded. A whale like this supplied meat enough 

 for the whole winter. This kind of hunting was left off" at the be- 

 ginning of the nineteenth century, the whales having at that time 

 quite ceased to come to land. A few years ago a whale was caught 

 from kaiaks, but this was an exceptional case. 



Reindeer, musk-oxen, and hares disappeared earlier than the 

 whales. These animals were hunted with bows made of wood and 

 whalebone and having strings of rawhide cord. At Kulusuk, where 



') Similar metliods of hunting are practised at Norton Sound, Alaska (Ran: Pre- 

 historic Fishing, p. 13 1. Small fishes are caught bj' the Makah Indians in the 

 same manner. (Swan: The Indians of Cape Flatter}^ p. 41). 



