410 
contrived “indicators’’ to warn them when the seal was approach- 
ing; the surface; but no amount of human ingenuity could guarantee 
invariable success, or banish the hardships of a motionless watch, 
often for many hours, exposed to all the rigours of an Arctic winter. 
In the mild days of spring the seals came out of their holes to 
bask in the sun on the surface of tlie ice, and the Eskimo stalked 
them like land game. They were more difficult to stalk than caribou, 
however, for there were usually no sheltering liillocks or ice-cakes 
behind which the hunter could take cover, and he had to ap]:iroaeh 
much nearer to throw a harpoon than to launch an arrow. In the 
spring, too, and even during the winter in localities where a strong 
tide or current produced a lane of open water, the natives harpooned 
many seals from the ice erlge and retrieved them in their skin-covered 
A Labr.ailor Eskimo liiinloi' in his kayak. (Photo hif F. ,f ohituurn.} 
canoes or kayaks. The open sea of midsummer, of course, neces- 
sitated harpooning the animals from the kayak itself. Not all the 
coastal Eskimo, however, employed the kayak for sealing. Those 
who lived between Coronation gulf and the Alagnetic Pole left the 
sea before the ice broke up and directed their energies to fishing 
and caribou hunting. 
To describe the complicated sealing equipment of the Eskimo 
■ — the various types of harpoons, the throwing board that increased 
their range, the air-inflated skin or bladder poke sometimes attached 
to the shaft, and all the other appliances — would involve us in too 
much detail. It is unnecessary, also, to describe the hunting of the 
walrus and the whale, the beluga and the narwhal, by many eastern 
and western Eskimo during the spring and summer months, for it 
