Among the
various artifices which they employ for this purpose, one of the most
ingenious consists in two men walking directly _from_ the deer they wish
to kill, which almost always follows them. As soon as they arrive at a
large stone, one of the men hides behind it with his bow, while the
other continuing to walk on, soon leads the deer within range of his
companion's arrows. They are also very careful to keep to leeward of the
deer, and will scarcely go out after them at all when the weather is
calm. For several weeks in the course of the summer, some of these
people almost entirely give up their fishery on the coast, retiring to
the banks of lakes several miles in the interior, which they represent
as large and deep, and abounding with salmon, while the pasture near
them affords good feeding to numerous herds of deer.
The distance to which these people extend their inland migrations, and
the extent of coast of which they possess a personal knowledge, are
really very considerable. A great number of them, who were born at
Amitioke and Igloolik, had been to _Noowook_, or nearly as far south as
Chesterfield Inlet, which is about the _ne plus ultra_ of their united
knowledge in a southerly direction. Okotook and a few others of the
Winter Island tribe had extended their peregrinations a considerable
distance to the northward, over the large insular piece of land to which
we have applied the name of Cockburn Island; which they described as
high land, and the resort of numerous reindeer.
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