Page:The Zoologist, 3rd series, vol 2 (1878).djvu/437

Rh at the base of a glacier near Cape Melville, to the wind-loved hut of Anoatok."

Dr. Hayes,* writing of the same people as he found them five years later, says that, from information which he obtained through Hans and Kalutunah, he estimated the tribe to number about one hundred souls— a very considerable diminution since Dr. Kane left them in 1855. The official account of the American Expedition under Hall, mentions that between the autumn of 1872 and the 1st May, 1873, one hundred and two Eskimo— men, women and children— visited Polaris House, with as many as one hundred and fifty dogs, the whole population along the coast from Melville Bay to Humboldt Glacier being estimated at one hundred and fifty souls. This is very satisfactory, for, in spite of Kane's gloomy prognostications, we find the tribe, after a lapse of nearly twenty years, exhibiting no sign of diminution.

Considerable interest must always attach to this isolated tribe, existing, under the most adverse circumstances, as the very northern outpost of man. Science and civilization are to a certain extent their debtors ; they saved the lives of Kane and his com- panions ; without their assistance Hayes would have been unable to carry on his investigations in Smith Sound ; and they aided the party who escaped from the wreck of the 'Polaris' and wintered near Littleton Island. The journal of Hans Hendrik, one of the Greenlanders who accompanied our Expedition, and who resided for five years with the "unchristened natives of the north," records that—

"In the days of yore their ancestors used to visit Upernivik, for which reason they still speak of ' South-landers.' Those northern people had for their merchandise walrus-teeth, for which they got wood, whereas the Southlanders had wood to barter with. Their ancestors also possessed ' kayaks.' The men yonder in the north subsist by the pursuit of White Whales along the edge of the ice, using four hunting bladders in connection with one line, but on the big ice only one bladder. They get the Seals which lie near their breathing-holes upon the ice by creeping up to them and harpooning them. They pursue the Walrus by the aid of two hunting lines, both ends of which are furnished with a harpoon, and their spears are headed with a chisel. As soon as the line becomes tightened by the pulliug of the stricken animal, they thrust this into the ice to hold. They also catch Seals by having many breathing-holes at once occupied by men. One

'The Open Polar Sea,' p. 386.