294 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



the size of the various animals which they hunt ; and their elastic bows, 

 strongly bound with strings of seal-gut, drive a six-foot arrow with unerring 

 certainty to a distant mark. To bring down a larger animal, the shaft is 

 armed with a sharp flint or a pointed bone ; if intended to strike a bird, it is 

 smaller, and blunted. 



The harpoons and lances used in killing whales or seals have long shafts of 

 wood or of the narwhal's tooth, and the barbed point is so constructed that, 

 when the blow takes effect, it is left sticking in the body of the animal, while 

 the shaft attached to it by a string is disengaged from the socket, and becomes 

 a buoy of wood. Seal-skins, blown up like bladders, are likewise used as buoys 

 for the whale-spears, being adroitly stripped from the animal so that all the nat- 

 ural apertures are easily made air-tight. 



With equal industry and skill the Esquimaux put to use almost every part 

 of the land and marine animals which they chase. Knives, spear-points, and 

 fish-hooks are made of the horns and bones of the deer. The ribs of the whale 

 are used in roofing huts or in the construction of sledges, where drift-timber is 

 scarce. Strong cord is made from strips of seal-skin hide, and the sinews of 

 musk-oxen and deer furnish bow-strings, or cord to make nets or snares. In 

 default of drift-wood, the bones of the whale are employed for the construction 

 of their sledges, in pieces fitted to each other with neatness, and firmly sewed 

 together. 



During the long confinement to their huts or " igloos " in the dark winter 

 months, the men execute some very fair figures in bone, and in walrus or fossil 

 ivory, besides making fish-hooks, knife-handles, and other instruments neatly of 

 these materials, or of metal or wood. 



Thus in all these respects the Esquimaux are as superior to the Red Indians 

 as they are in strength and personal courage ; and yet no Norwegian can more 

 utterly despise the filthy Lapp, and no orthodox Mussulman look down with 

 greater contempt upon a " giaour," than the Loucheux or Cheppewayan upon 

 the Esquimaux, who in his eyes is no better than a brute^ and whom he ap- 

 proaches only to kill. 



In his "Voyage to the Coppermine River" Hearne relates a dreadful instance 

 of this bloodthirsty hatred. The Indians who accompanied him having heard 

 that some Esquimaux had erected their summer huts near the mouth of that 

 river, were at once seized with a tiger-like fury. Hearne, the only European of 

 the party, had not the power to restrain them, and he might as well have at- 

 tempted to touch the heart of an ice-bear as to move the murderous band to 

 pity. As craftily and noiselessly as serpents they drew nigh, and, when the 

 midnight sun verged on the horizon, with a dreadful yell they burst on the huts 

 of their unsuspecting victims. Not one of them escaped, and the monsters de- 

 lighted to prolong the misery of their death-struggle by repeated wounds. An 

 old woman had both her eyes torn out before she received the mortal blow. A 

 young girl fled to Hearne for protection, who used every effort to save her, 

 but in vain. In 1821 some human skulls lying on the spot still bore testimony 

 to this cruel slaughter, and the name of the " Bloody Falls," given by Hearne to 

 the scene of the massacre, will convey its memory to distant ages. No wonder 



