The carcases are retrieved and skinned, and immense feasting follows. These manœuvres are repeated day after day throughout the whole season, until the snow begins to appear again on the higher ranges, and the arctic summer is on the wane. Gradually the tribesfolk move off again towards the lower grounds, the south, and the sea, transporting with them huge bundles of invaluable skins and a great quantity of deer hams, until one by one they reach the various points of water where they left and stored their boats on the up-country trip. There is no general point of assembly on the return journey. Each tribe takes its own course and works its way back towards its own territory unaccompanied by the others. The women and children get a brief spell of rest when they reach the coast, while the men put in a few days seal hunting, to provision the homeward voyage. Finally, the umiaks are launched again and reloaded to the very gunwales; the sails are hoisted, and the fleet draws away through the archipelagoes of the coast to its port of registration! Not infrequently on one of these big summer hunting expeditions, traces are discovered of a winter deer hunting party which had been overtaken by disaster. The evidences of some tragedy lie there for all to read: the sled torn to pieces, weapons scattered about, small boxes lying here and there, and bones—human, canine or vulpine—all over the place. Hunger, perhaps, overtook the party; sickness followed. Wolves attacked, or the hungry team of dogs got out of hand and tore down the hunters, who were unable successfully to defend themselves. The writer could instance many a savage incident of this description. In a very similar district to the one described in the preceding account of the summer hunting, there was a fiord leading up to a landlocked bay, a favourite resort of the white whales. Regularly each year the hunters of the tribes in the vicinity used to go to hunt these creatures with gun and spear, taking splendid hauls of meat back to the camp, and bales of stout hide to be made into thongs, harness, etc. So much flesh and offal was left about on the scene of action that wolves came to infest the entire region. In early spring the fiord afforded a particularly good sealing ground, being so sheltered from the crashing seas outside.