178 



SECOND VOYAGE FOR THE DISCOVERY 



After distributing a number of presents in the first four huts, I found on 

 entering the last, that Pootooalook had been successful in bringing in a seal, 

 over which two elderly women were standing, armed with large knives, their 

 hands and faces besmeared with blood, and delight and exultation depicted 

 on their countenances. They had just performed the first operation of di- 

 viding the animal into two parts, and thus laying open the intestines. These 

 being taken out, and all the blood carefully baled up and put into the 

 ootkooseek, or cooking-pot, over the fire, they separated the head and flippers 

 from the carcass and then divided the ribs. All the loose scraps were put 

 into the pot for immediate use, except such as the two butchers now and then 

 crammed into their own mouths, or distributed to the numerous and easrer 

 by-standers for still more immediate consumption. Of these morsels the 

 children came in for no small share, every little urchin that could find its way 

 to the slaughter-house, running eagerly in and, between the legs of the men 

 and women, presenting its mouth for a large lump of raw flesh, just as an 

 English child of the same age might do for a piece of sugar-candy. Every 

 now and then also a dog would make his way towards the reeking carcass, and 

 when in the act of seizing upon some delicate part, was sent off yelping by 

 a heavy blow with the handles of the knives. When all the flesh is disposed 

 of, for a portion of which each of the women from the other huts usually 

 brings her ootkooseek, the blubber still remains attached to the skin, from 

 which it is separated the last ; and the business being now completed, the two 

 parts of the hide are rolled up and laid by, together with the store of flesh 

 and blubber. During the dissection of their seals, they have a curious cus- 

 tom of sticking a thin filament of skin, or of some part of the intestines, upon 

 the foreheads of the boys, who are themselves extremely fond of it, it being 

 intended, as Iligliuk afterwards informed me, to make them fortunate seal- 

 catchers. 



The seals which they take during the winter are of two kinds, the Neitiek, 

 or small seal (phoca hispidaj, and the Oguke, or large seal f phoca barbata). 

 These and the Ei-u-ek, or Walrus, constitute their means of subsistence at 

 this season ; but, on this particular part of the coast, the latter are not very 

 abundant and they chiefly catch the neitiek. The animal we had now seen 

 dissected was of that kind, and with young at the time. A small one taken 

 out of it had a beautiful skin which, both in softness and colour, very much 

 resembled raw silk ; but no inducement could make Pootooalook part with it, 

 he having destined it for that night's supper. 



