A LAND OF ETERNAL WARRING 



679 



exactly as if they had lost their way, a 

 good instance being L'Anse Amour Bay, 

 behind Forteam light-house. 



The other great way to catch seals is 

 known as ice hunting, and means fol- 

 lowing the whelping herds out on to the 

 drifting floe ice, which is done either in 

 large vessels or with Hght punts hauled 

 over the floe from the neighboring land, 

 or simply by venturing out on a run and 

 chancing getting back to land again. 



Labrador seals are real seals, and not 

 the fur-bearing "Otaridce'' of the Pacific. 

 Our largest, the hoods, are of immense 

 size and height, and by no means to be 

 carelessly approached when with their 

 young. They will then show fight very 

 readily, and many a poor old bull has 

 come by his death from a rifle just to 

 enable the murderer to steal the pelt of 

 his baby that he was defending, his own 

 lody being left, after all, as being too 

 heavy to take. 



Their strength is well shown by there 

 being found in their stomachs shells that 

 do not exist less than 90 fathoms down, 

 at which depth they must withstand a 

 pressure of eleven atmospheres, while 

 puny man, with all his apparatus, has 

 not been able to descend thirty fathoms. 

 Specially provided for spring boot bot- 

 toms are the Phoccc harbntcE, or square 

 flippers, their skin being very thick and 

 water-tight, and almost hairless. Of any 

 and all these the meat can be eaten, and 

 the fat used for fire and light. 



That a young seal can rival the fatted 

 calf on his own ground is shown by the 

 fact that a white coat, or Kotik, of 38 

 inches long will have an immodest waist 

 of 34 inches round. 



Excellent as their skins are always for 

 sleeping bags, canoes, tents, harnesses, 

 etc., for clothing, in cold weather they 

 cannot touch the cured caribou hide. In 

 mild weather the seal hides are, as might 

 be expected, much more water-tight, ex- 

 cept when tanned, which we do by letting 

 the skin "tint" till the hairs can be 

 scraped off, and then soaking them in the 

 boiled bark of our fir trees. 



The soft chamois-like, cleaned skin of 

 the deer makes clothing impenetrable to 



wind and weather, while the gloves and 

 moccasins, being soft and mobile, are far 

 warmer than the Labrador seal. So im- 

 portant a point in keeping warm is this 

 mobility of the boot that in really cold 

 weather there is a perceptible difference 

 between a doe-skin moccasin and one 

 made of an old stag, the thinner doe-skin 

 being much warmer. 



These deer are in great abundance still, 

 and are still a staple article of diet and 

 clothing, and even tent covers, with all 

 our northern folk. The softened skin is 

 generally brought out by our Indians and 

 sold by the pound. They also bring out 

 what they call parchment — that is, skin 

 with the fat left in and the hair removed. 

 This is used for filling snow-shoes, and 

 is often sold by them cut all ready into 

 "babbage," and rolled up into balls like 

 string. The winter skins of deer killed 

 by Eskimo are invariably used as bed 

 spreads, the close, thick hair forming the 

 best insulator possible from the cold 

 ground. 



When old or superabundant, these are 

 exported to Germany, where with true 

 Teutonic economy they are used for sta- 

 tion mats till the hair is all trodden off, 

 after which they become white buckskin 

 gloves for the immaculate guards of the 

 German Emperor. 



That these deer can obtain in such 

 quantities in spite of their numberless 

 enemies, human and otherwise, proves 

 what an immense industry is possible in 

 raising domestic reindeer for their meat 

 and hides. I have just heard from a 

 doctor friend in Alaska, whose herd of 

 70 in 1902 has become 490 in 1909. My 

 own herd of 250 in 1907 has become 

 nearly 600 in 1909. 



Flies are, strangely enough, really the 

 worst enemies of the deer. There may 

 not appear a single fly mark on a deer 

 one kills, and yet among many hundreds 

 of skins I never yet saw one skin that has- 

 not from 100 to i ,000 holes in it bored by 

 the grub of the hornet-like fly we call 

 ''stout/' while it is safe to bet that you 

 can never kill a caribou without finding 

 eggs, chrysallides, or the maggots of 

 these flies lying among the ethmoid cells, 



