Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/261

242 to me, I intently watched what followed. The seal was perhaps two or three weeks old, and, like all young seals, was white, though not as white as untainted snow. While Koojesse kept hold of the line, four or five fathoms long, the seal worked itself hastily back into the igloo, its birthplace, and there made a plunge down the seal-hole into the sea, Koojesse allowed it the whole play of his line, crawling into the igloo, taking the seal-hook with him, and waiting patiently for the parent seal to come up. I was close by him, there being just sufficient room through the opening made when the young seal was caught for me to push myself in. There, lying flat down, we both carefully watched. In three or four minutes the young seal returned, popping up its round, shining head, and blowing or puffing like a whale, though on a reduced scale, its large eyes glistening like lights from twinkling stars. It came directly to its bed-place where we reclined. As it attempted to crawl up, Koojesse gave it a stroke on the head, signifying "Go away—dive down—show to your mother that you, the darling of her affections, are in trouble, and when she comes to your aid I'll hook her too." The two women were now close by us, each with a seal-dog, and while thus waiting I had a good opportunity for inspecting a seal's igloo. It was a model of those which the Innuits make for themselves, and was completely dome-shaped. It was five feet or so in diameter, and two and a half feet high, with a depth of snow above it of some five feet. The platform of sea-ice was where the parent seal gave birth to its young and afterward nursed it. On one side was the seal-hole, filled with sea- water, which was within two inches of the top of the platform.

After waiting for some time, and finding that the old seal would not show itself, the young one was withdrawn and placed on the snow. Then Koojesse put his foot upon its back, between the fore-arms or flippers, and pressed with all his weight, the object being to kill the seal by stopping its breath. Innuits adopt this mode in preference to using knife or spear. It prevents the loss of what is to them the precious portion—the blood.