United States or Wallis and Futuna ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
This requires much practice and experience to accomplish, and is performed in the following manner: Every man being furnished with an ice-chisel, lashes it to the end of a small staff about four to five feet long; he then walks along the edge of the banks, and keeps knocking his chisel against the ice.
"Instead of digging into the house, he commenced cutting a hole in the ice with his ice-chisel about two feet from the edge of the mud. That being accomplished, he cut another, and another, until four holes were pierced forming the corners of a square, and embracing the house of the muskrat within.
"As soon as we had reached the ice, we sprang out of the boat on to it, and, after digging a hole into it with a long, sharp bar of iron, called an ice-chisel, we put therein one end of a large, heavy, crooked hook, called an ice-anchor, and then to a ring in the other end of this ice-anchor we made fast the end of the rope that we had brought with us.
He was the hardest worker, with ice-chisel or pole, and the last to leave a sheet of ice that had broken loose and started down stream. For, not always did the ice sever at the point where they were working, but sometimes above them; so that a sharp watch had to be kept against the danger of being caught on an ice patch, and carried along with it.
So saying, Frank went off, taking Chimo along with him; while Maximus seized the axe and ice-chisel, and began the laborious process of digging through to the water. The ice on the lake was five feet thick, but by dint of great perseverance the Esquimau succeeded in making several holes through it ere Frank returned.
In a few minutes, by means of the ice-chisel and pickaxe, we had pierced the crust of the dome; and there, apparently half asleep, because dazzled and blinded by the sudden influx of light were no less than eight full-grown musquashes! "Almost before I could count them, Old Foxey had transfixed the whole party, one after the other, with his long spear.
The others, now seeing the proximity of my companion with his huge ice-chisel, and frighted, moreover, by his wild Indian yells, turned tail and scampered off. "Three of them, however, had uttered their last howl, and the deer was found close by already half devoured!
Grasping Harvey by an arm, he pointed to a seam in the ice. "Chop there, Jack!" he cried. "Here, Henry, take my ice-chisel; you're stronger than I am. If we can cut loose, perhaps we can work in shore on the small piece." They saw the chance a desperate one and took it. Holding in his hands the chisel he had been working with, Harvey began chopping furiously at the seam in the ice.
An ice-chisel, a knife and some beads were left at this pile. The shores of this bay, which I have named after Sir George Warrender, are low and clayey and the country for many miles is level and much intersected with water, but we had not leisure to ascertain whether they were branches of the bay or freshwater lakes.
"The traps, or implements, consisted of an ice-chisel with a handle some five feet in length, a small pickaxe, an iron-pointed spear barbed only on one side, with a long straight shaft, and a light pole about a dozen feet in length, quite straight and supple. "We had provided ourselves with a small stock of eatables as well as materials for kindling a fire but no Indian is ever without these.
Word Of The Day