The Portland daily press. [volume] (Portland, Me.) 1862-1921, 1894-11-03
HUNTING THE SEAL.
The Eskimo Plays Waiting Game and
Gets the Quarry.

h - q
Although the little hinged seal, or
Fiord seal, contemptuously called the
foe rat by English sailors, is the small
est of all the species, it is also the most
enterprising. In the cold waters of the
North it goes simply everywhere.
Throughout tens of thousands of square
miles of cold and stormy waters, broken
and chaotic ice packs, and barren foe ice
seven feet thick, the jolly little Net
sick" is the principal inhabitant, ready
to yield his chubby body to any hungry
Eskimo who happens to need it.
Taken altogether, this animal is to
the Eskimos generally the most valua-
BILE source of food and clothing of all the
quadrupeds of the North. In ranging
northward all other seals stop about on
the eighty-hrst parallel, but the ringed
seal cries Excelsior!" and presses right
on. Regardless of cold and other draw
lacks he joyously paddles past Lady
Franklin Bay, out through Robson
Channel, and into the Polar Sea itself,
which is named after our greatest A meri-
can, north of all land. 1t was observed
by Gen. Greely's party in latitude 50 de-
grees minutes-only thirty miles south
of the farthest north ever reached by
man. What is more, Gen. Greedy says
that they winter as far north rs Robson
how they maintain breathing holes
when the ice is so thick. 1t seems to
me, however, that with the Temperature
down to 60 degrees below zero. one
lungful of air ought to be quite suffi-
cient to last any seal an entire winter.
The ringed seal is found in Behring
Sea, and throughout the Arctic Ocean in
both hemispheres The largest individ-
uals are only about four feet in length,
and by reason of it's size this species is
,despised by the white sealers-a very
fortunate thing for the Eskimos. In
color it is extremely variable. In a coll
lection of fifteen fresh skins that once
came into my hands from Point Barrow,
there were three well defined types-oae
almost black, another dark, notified
with light, and third almost yellow.
All showed the curious brownish yellow
rings with darker centres from which
the species takes it's popular name. This
is the seal which the Eskimo hunts by
simply playing waiting game, in which
patience is his most powerful weapon.
He seek over the solid ice foe until he
finds little round hole running down
through the ice quite to the water. be it
two feet or six. That is the breathing
hole of seal, which the creature has
kept open with it's warm breath ever
since the ice began to form. Mr.. Eskimo
simply camps on the ice beside the hole
and shivers and waits, he it one hour or
fifteen. He waits for Mr.. Seal to come
and stick his nose into the bottom of
the hole, to give and take some air.
When he does SO, the Eskimo promptly
jabs a spear down through the hole into
the head of the seal. If it catches the
animal and holds him fast, all the
native has to do is to chop through
about five feet of solid ice and get it.
This seal is the first aquatic animal
that Eskimo children are taught to kill,
and when seven-year-old Eskimo John
ME kills his first seal, the proud father
hangs the teeth and front fippers around
his neck as trophies Of his skill. 1t is
said, also, that in their eagerness to
have their children make record
Eskimo mothers sometimes catch seals
on the SLY and allow their little children
to kill them, to add to their individual
scores. w. I. Hornaday in st. Nicholas
for Novembe