Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 26.djvu/790

770 persons, who are distributed among seven settlements. The Kikkerton Eskimos, who alone once manned eighteen boats, representing a population of about four hundred and fifty heads, now number only eighty. The two fishing-stations are situated on Kikkerton, an island on the east coast of the sound. When the Eskimos who have spent the summer up the fiord return at the beginning of October, they eagerly offer their services at the station, for they receive in payment for a half-year's work a gun, harmonicum, or something of the kind, and a ration of provisions for their families, with tobacco, every week. Every Saturday the women come at the blowing of the horn into the station-house, to receive their bread, coffee, and sirup, and the precious tobacco. In return, the Eskimo is expected to deliver a piece of every seal he catches into the kitchen of the station.

The time for the fall catching commences as soon as the ice begins to form. If the generally stormy weather permits it, the boats leave the harbor to look out for the whales, which are accustomed to go along the east coast of the sound toward the north. During the last years the catch was very unprofitable, for only a few whales were seen. As the ice forms very quickly, the boats must be brought back to the land by the end of October or the beginning of November. Since whales have become scarce, the stations have followed the business of collecting seal blubber and skins, which they buy from the Eskimos.

A lively traffic springs up as soon as the ice has become strong enough to allow sledges to pass from shore to shore. The sledges of the stations are sent from one settlement to another, to exchange tobacco, matches, coffee, bread, etc., for skins and the spare blubber which the Eskimos have carefully saved up. The natives themselves, who need useful articles like cooking-pots, lamps, etc., collect quantities of hides and blubber, and come to Kikkerton to supply their wants. Eskimos come over from the southern part of the west coast of Davis Strait to exchange bears' skins for articles they want. The winter passes quickly away amid this stir of business, till everything comes to a stop in April. For now the seals cast their young, whose white, long-haired skin forms an important element in the clothing of the people. As the hunting-season only lasts a month, the natives put the time to a good use; and the old settlements are quickly deserted, for the seals are to be found most abundantly in the fiords and among the rough ice, which are the least productive places in winter.

When the sun has reached such a height that the snow begins to melt in favored spots, a new life begins at the station. The skins which had been collected in the winter, when frozen, are brought out of the store-room and exposed to the beams of the sun. A number of Eskimo women busy themselves, with their half-moon-shaped knives, in cutting the blubber from the skins and putting it away in tubs. Others clean and salt the skins, which arc likewise packed away. The men also find enough work to do after the catching of the young seals