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Updated: June 6, 2025
In accordance with their chief's resolve, the Grabantak band embarked in their kayaks next morning, the gale having moderated, and with the intention of obtaining reinforcements, paddled back to Flatland, which they reached in a couple of days.
Of course, coming among the Eskimos as we did in winter, we did not see them using their kayaks or their umiaks,* but our experience with dogs and komatik was pretty complete. These dogs are big wolfish creatures, which resemble wolves so closely in fact that when the dogs and wolves are together the one can scarcely be told from the other.
As he tucks himself in so closely that water cannot enter he does not fear to be capsized, for he can right himself with a sweep of his paddle. Kayaks are very light and handy, as the frame is made either of whalebone or spruce. The oomiak is the Eskimo's family boat and cargo carrier, flat-bottomed, not decked in, and sometimes big enough for twenty people with their gear.
Hardly had it come up, when the harpoons went flying towards it, and entered in between its shoulder-blades. "Ai, ai what a throw!" cried the dwarf in astonishment. And the man took the seal and made a tow-line fast. Then the two kayaks set off together in towards land. "Hum hum. Wouldn't care to ... come and visit us?" said the dwarf suddenly. But this the man would gladly do. "Hum hum.
But at least a first attempt will now be made to give some general idea of what such a history would contain in fuller detail: of the kayaks and canoes the Eskimos and Indians used before the white man came, and use to-day, in the ever-receding wilds; of the various small craft moved by oar and sail that slowly displaced the craft moved only by the paddle; of the sailing vessels proper, and how they plied along Canadian waterways, and out beyond, on all the Seven Seas; of the steamers, which, in their earlier pioneering days, shed so much forgotten lustre on Canadian enterprise; of those 'Cod-lands of North America' and other teeming fisheries which the far-seeing Lord Bacon rightly thought 'richer treasures than the mines of Mexico and of Peru'; of the Dominion's trade and government relations with the whole class of men who 'have their business in great waters'; and, finally, of that guardian Navy, without whose freely given care the 'water history' of Canada could never have been made at all.
Then the man turned round towards her, and said: "Look at the tail of your tunic; it is hanging down between your legs." And when she bent down to look, her belly burst. And as she burst, a steam rose up out of her, and turned to fog, which still floats about to this day among the hills. This was in the old days, in those times when men were yet skilful rowers in kayaks.
While he gazed at the busy groups below, our weak-minded youth observed two of the party step into kayaks which lay on the beach, push off into the bay, and commence what may be styled "kayak exercise." As Ippegoo greatly enjoyed witnessing such exercises, he threw off his lethargy, and, leaping up, quickly descended to the shore.
In their terror, the deer endeavoured to escape by swimming in different directions; but the long double-bladed paddles of the Esquimaux sent the light kayaks after them like lightning, and a sharp prick on their flanks turned them in the right direction. There were so many deer, however, that a few succeeded in gaining the land; but here the guns of the traders awaited them.
Can you restore the mountain-heaps of kayaks, and oomiaks, and spears, and walrus-lines, from the smoke into which they vanished! Can you recall the great rivers of whale-oil from the sea into which they have been poured, or the blood of men from the earth that swallowed it? Is not war always loss, loss, loss, and never gain?
It neither killed nor stunned, though it probably surprised it, for it sheered off permanently, and all the rest of the herd went away to sea along with it. After this unexpected and dangerous encounter was over, it was found that several other animals were splashing about in a dying state, or fast to seal-skin buoys which the men in the kayaks had managed to affix to them.
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