298 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



While the seal, narwhal, and white whale furnish the staple food of the 

 more southern Greenlander, the walrus is the chief resource of the Smith 

 Sound Esquimaux. The manner of hunting this animal depends much on the 

 season of the year. In spring, or the breeding-season, when the walrus is in 

 his glory, he is taken in two ways. Sometimes he has risen by the side of an 

 iceberg, where the currents have worn away the floe, or through a tide crack, 

 and, enjoying the sunshine too long, finds his retreat cut off by the freezing up 

 of the opening ; for like the seal, the walrus can only work from below at his 

 breathing-hole. When thus caught, the Esquimaux, who with keen hunter- 

 craft are scouring the floes, scent him out by their dogs and spear him. Fre- 

 quently the female and her calf, accompanied by the grim-visaged father, are 

 seen surging, in loving trios, from crack to crack, and sporting in the openings. 

 While thus on their tour, they invite their vigilant enemies to the second meth- 

 od of capture. This also is by the lance and harpoon ; but it often becomes a 

 regular battle, the male gallantly fronting the assault, and charging the hunters 

 with furious bravery. In the fall, when the pack is but partially closed, the 

 walrus are found in numbers, hanging around the neutral region of mixed ice 

 and water, and, as this becomes solid with the advance of winter, following it 

 more and more to the south. 



The Esquimaux at this season approach them over the young ice, and as- 

 sail them in cracks and holes with harpoon and line. This fishery, as the sea- 

 son grows colder, darker, and more tempestuous, is fearfully hazardous. Kane 

 relates how, during a time of famine, two of his Esquimaux friends, Awaklok 

 and Myouk, determined to seek the walrus on the open ice. They succeeded in 

 killing a large male, and w^ere returning to their village, when a north wind 

 broke up the ice, and they found themselves afloat. The impulse of a Euro- 

 pean would have been to seek the land ; but they knew that the drift was al- 

 ways most dangerous on the coast, and urged their dogs towards the nearest 

 iceberg. They reached it after a struggle, and, by great efforts, made good 

 their landing, with their dogs and the half-butchered carcass of the walrus. It 

 was at the close of the last moonlight of December, and a complete darkness 

 settled around them. They tied the dogs down to knobs of ice, to prevent 

 their losing their foothold, and prostrated themselves, to escape being blown 

 off by the violence of the wind. At first the sea broke over them, but they 

 gained a higher level, and built a sort of screen of ice. On the fifth night af- 

 terwards, so far as they could judge, one of Myouk's feet was frozen, and 

 Awaklok lost his great toe by frost bite. But they did not lose courage, and 

 ate their walrus-meat as they floated slowly to the south. It was towards the 

 close of the second moonlight, after a month's imprisonment, such as only 

 these iron men could endure, that they found the berg had grounded. They 

 liberated their dogs as soon as the young ice could bear their weight, and at- 

 taching long lines to them, which they cut from the hide of the dead walrus, 

 they succeeded in hauling themselves through the water-space which always 

 surrounds an iceberg, and reaching safe ice. They returned to their village 

 like men raised from the dead, to meet a welcome, but to meet famine along 

 with it. 



