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Show SEalIinui IN LABRADOR. Held Many Miles Square Fairly Teeming With Seals. Late in February the Newfoundland lealing steamers break through the ice in St. John's harbor and make their way to some northern outposts, lying there until March 10, the earliest date on which the law allows them to "go to the ice. " They stand out to sea until they meet the immense fields of ice from the Arctic ooean. These fields are often many square miles in extent and fairly teem with seals. A great 6eal hunter told me that the sea seemed uddenly oonverted into an ocean of seals and ice. The steamer breaks into the jam and floats with it or skirta along the edge, the crew, 200 or 800 in number, taking to the floating ice and living there for days and nights. The young seals fatten so rapidly that sealers say you can actually see them grow while you are looking at them. The poor creatures are easily killed, a blow with the butt end of a gaff finishing finish-ing them. The hunter then "sculps," or skins them, inserting a sharp knife under the fat, and with marvelous dexterity dex-terity taking off the "pelt" skin and fat together in about a minute and a half. A party of men will "pan" their pelts rAt.n y"'A'.C V " number of O.ia "n nmt 0,-51 .-ft, . are pans enough, tne steamer mum. -ur j to the ice and hauls them aboard with a donkey winch, or the men drag them to the vesse's side. The Nowfonndland Beal hunters always al-ways speak of seals as "swiWand for our word carry they say "spell." A schoolmaster who had been listening to j. a seal hunter's story said sneeringly: "Swiles! How do you spell swilesT "We don't spell 'em," replied tLt 1 hunter; "we most generally hauls 'em!" Gustav Kobbe in St Nicholas. |