64 
FAMINE AT ETAH. 
come. But a new phase of Esquimaux life had come 
upon its indolent, happy, blubber-fed denizens. Instead 
of plump, greasy children, and round-cheeked matrons, 
Hans saw around him lean figures of misery: the men 
looked hard and bony, and the children shrivelled in 
the hoods which cradled them at their mothers’ backs. 
Famine had been among them; and the skin of a young 
searunicorn, lately caught, was all that remained to 
them of food. It was the old story of improvidence 
and its miserable train. They had even eaten their 
reserve of blubber, and were seated in darkness and 
cold, waiting gloomily for the sun. Even their dogs, 
their main reliance for the hunt and for an escape to 
some more favored camping-ground, had fallen a sacri¬ 
fice to hunger. Only four remained out of thirty: the 
rest had been eaten. 
“Hans behaved well, and carried out my order’s in 
their full spirit. He proposed to aid them in -the 
walrus-hunt. They smiled at first with true Indian 
contempt: but when they saw my Marston rifle, which 
he had with him, they changed their tone. When the 
sea is completely frozen, as it is now, the walrus can 
only be caught by harpooning them at their holes or 
in temporary cracks. This mode of hunting them is 
called utoJc. It requires great skill to enter the har¬ 
poon, and often fails from the line giving way in the 
struggles of the animal. They had lost a harpoon and 
line in this manner the very day before Hans’s arrival. 
It required very little argument to persuade them to 
accept his offered company and try the effect of his 
