Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1895-10-26

seal as soon as the sea froze. But 1t was
an early and savage autumn. All through
September there were continuous gales
that broke up the smooth seal ice where 1t
was only four or five feet thick and fore
ed 1t inland and piled a great barrier some
thirty miles broad of Jumped and ragged
and needy ice. over which it was impos-
sible to draw the sleighs. The edge of
the foe off which the seal were used to
fish in winter lay perhaps twenty miles be-
yond this barrier and out of reach of the
managed to scrape through the winter on
their stock Of frozen salmon and stored
blubber and what the traps gave them,
but in December one of their hunters came
across tupik, skin tent, of three women
and girl nearly dead. whose men had
come down from the far north and been
crushed in their KAYAKS their little skin
hunting boats) while they were out after
the 10 ig-horned narwhal Kadlu, of course.
could only distribute the women among
the huts Of the winter village, for no mutt
would dare refuse meal to stranger
He never knows when his own time may
come to beg. Amoraq took the girl. who
was about fourteen, into her own house as
a sort of servant. From the cut of her
sharp-pointed hood and the long diamond
pattern Of her white deerskin leggins they
supposed she came from Ellesmere Land
She had never seen tin cooking pots or
wooden-shod sleighs before but Kotuko,
the hoy, and kotuko, the dog, were ratner
fond of her.
Then all the foxes went south. and even
the wolverine the growing, blunt-headed
little thief of the snow, did not take the
trouble to follow the line of empty traps
that Kotuko set. The tribe lost couple OF
their best hunters. who were badly crippled
in fight with musk OK, and that threw
more work on the others. ,Kotuko went out
day after day with light hunting sleigh
and six or seven of the strongest dogs.
locking till his eyes ached for some patch
of clear ice where a seal might perhaps
have scratched breathing hole. Kotuko.
the dog, ranged far and wide, and In the
dead stiffness of the ice fields kotuko, the
boy, could hear his half-choked whine of
excitement above a seal hole three miles
away as plainly as though he were at his
elbow. When the dog found hole the boy
would build himself little low snow wall
to keep off the worst Of the bitter wind.
and there he would wait ten, twelve,
twenty hours for the seal to come up to
breathe, his eyes glued to the tiny mark he
had made above the hole to guide the down.
ward thrust of his harpoon, a little seal
skin mat under his feet, and his legs tied
together in the tutareang-the buckle that
the old hunters had talked about. This
helps to keep a mans legs from twitching
as he waits, and waits, and waits for the
quick-eared seal to rise. Though there is
no excitement in 1t, you can easily believe
thermometer perhaps 40 degrees below zero,
is the hardest work an Inuit knows. When
a seal was caught kotuko the dog, would
bound forward, his trace trailing behind
him, and help to pull the body to the sleigh,
where the tired and hungry dogs lay sui
lenly under the lee of the broken ice.
A seal did not go very far, for each mouth
in the little village had right to be filled,
and never bone. hide nor sinew was wasted.
The dogs meat was taken for human use
and Amoraq fed the team with pieces of
old summer skin-tents raked out from I'M