The Open Polar Sea: A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"Hayes, I. I. (Isaac Israel)
History
The Open Polar Sea: A narrative of a voyage of discovery towards the North pole, in the schooner "United States"
Hayes, I. I. (Isaac Israel)
Arctic regions; United States (Schooner)
In consideration for the kindness which I had shown these people, they
gave me a set of their hunting and domestic implements, the principal
of them being a lance, harpoon, coil of line, a rabbit-trap, a lamp,
pot, flint and steel, with some lamp-wick and tinder. The lance was a
wooden shaft, probably from Dr. Kane's lost ship, the _Advance_, with
an iron spike lashed firmly to one end of it, and a piece of walrus
tusk, shod with sharp iron, at the other. The harpoon staff was a
narwal tooth or horn, six feet long,--a very hard and solid piece of
ivory, and perfectly straight. The harpoon head was a piece of walrus
tusk, three inches long, with a hole through the centre for the line,
a hole into one end for the sharpened point of the staff, and at the
other end it was, like the lance-head, tipped with iron. The line was
simply a strip of raw seal-hide about fifty feet long, and was made
by a continuous cut around the body of the seal. The rabbit-trap was
merely a seal-skin line with a multitude of loops dangling from it.
The lamp was a shallow dish of soft soap-stone, in shape not unlike a
clam-shell, and was eight inches by six. The pot was a square-sided
vessel of the same material. The flint was a piece of hard granite, the
steel a lump of crude iron pyrites, the wick was dried moss, and the
tinder the delicate down-like covering of the willow catkins.
Tcheitchenguak told me that he was preparing the lances for a walrus
hunt, and that he and Hans intended to try their skill on the morrow.
The walrus had been very numerous in the open waters outside the harbor
all through the winter, and their shrill cry could be heard at almost
any time from the margin of the ice. The flesh of these animals is the
staple food of the Esquimaux; and although they prize the flesh of the
reindeer, yet it is much as we do "canvas-backs;" and, for a long and
steady pull, there is nothing like the "Awak," as they call the walrus,
in imitation of its cry. To them its flesh is what rice is to the
Hindoo, beef to the Gouchos of Buenos Ayres, or mutton to the Tartars
of Mongolia.
[Sidenote: A WALRUS HUNT.]
[Sidenote: A SEASON OF PLENTY.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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