gEORGE tALLAN ENGLAND 
in the sealing outfit he wore on the great an¬ 
nual Newfoundland seal hunt of 1922. Eng¬ 
land is the first outsider who ever went on 
this amazing venture, and his book is a mag¬ 
nificent record of this 20th Century epic. 
Vikings of the Ice 
THE STORY OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST HUNT 
By George Allan England 
E ACH spring from out the harbor of 
St. John’s, Newfoundland, sails a lit¬ 
tle fleet of battered veterans of the ice, seek¬ 
ing amidst the polar Hoes the great seal 
herds of the North Atlantic. Manning 
these sturdy oak beamed hulls are men 
whose courage, hardihood, and skill are 
second to none in the world. These qual¬ 
ities and others as fine are needed, for to make but a few dollars 
these Vikings of the Ice must live through incredible hardships 
and face a variety of dangers from ice, fog, hunger, and the great 
implacable breath of the Arctic. 
On the annual hunt occurs the greatest single slaughter of 
mammals in the world—the kill has risen nearly to 700,000, an 
incredible number. The sealers are a breed of men set apart, 
they have their own customs, their own standards, and their 
language is well-nigh incomprehensible without a glossary—as 
picturesque a body of hardy adventurers as ever existed. 
No chronicle had ever been made of this Twentieth Century 
epic until George Allan England went along as one of the men, 
ate their food, lived their life and faced their dangers. He re¬ 
turned with the notes from which he 
has written this vigorous volume 
which is illustrated with a few of the 
many photographs which the author 
took, the first ever taken of the New¬ 
foundland seal hunt as a whole. 
Here is a bit taken from the nar¬ 
rative after the seal herd had been 
located which gives the flavor of the 
book better than could anything else. 
“An old dog was butchered right under 
our bows, so that the ship nearly ran down 
both slain and slayer. The exploit raised 
a tumult of plaudits. As in a theatre gal¬ 
lery, masses of men clung to vantage points 
to watch every episode, every turn of tech¬ 
nique. Talk about your Spanish bullfights! 
How tame by contrast with this! One man plunged into open 
water and turned back to the ship. His comrades unmercifully 
railed at him with jeers and hoots. Shamed, he dashed on again. 
Wild yells of approval pursued him as he ran harder than ever, 
water flying from every rag he wore. He landed his seal, and 
immediately went out again from the moving, crashing ship, not 
even waiting to change his clothes. Ere he got back again, his 
clothes were frozen stiff as boards. 
“Miles on we pressed, a noisy impertinence ringed by vast 
white silences of majesty and beauty. Onward we killed, our 
crimson trail zigzagging through the 
ice. Intermittently carcasses were 
hurled over the rail, flopping into 
water that they reddened, or land¬ 
ing on ice with a sickening squush. 
The sky veiled itself with freezing 
clouds. Came flurries of snow and 
hail.” 
An intensely exciting and vig¬ 
orous narrative with an incalculable 
historical value. 
Price, net, $4.00 
Doubleday, Page & Company 
Garden City, New York 
