The bayonet knife (which should be fitted into a handle with a
cross-piece to prevent the slipping of the hand down on to the blade)
should be at least 14 inches long without the handle; this is used to
reach the seal's heart. Our flensing knives were one foot long including
the handle, the blades were seven inches long by 11/4 inches broad: some
were pointed and others round and I do not know which was best. The
handles should be of wood as being warmer to hold.
Killing and cutting up seals is a gruesome but very necessary business,
and the provision of suitable implements is humane as well as economic in
time and labour. The skin is first cut off with the blubber attached: the
meat is then cut from the skeleton, the entrails cleaned out, the liver
carefully excised. The whole is then left to freeze in pieces on the
snow, which are afterwards collected as rock-like lumps. The carcass can
be cut up with an axe when needed and fed to the dogs. Nothing except
entrails was wasted.
[Illustration: SEALS]
[Illustration: SEALS]
[Illustration: FROM THE SEA--E. A. Wilson, del.]
[Illustration: FROM THE SEA--E. A. Wilson, del.]
Lighting was literally a burning question. I do not know that any lamp
was better than a tin matchbox fed with blubber, with strands of lamp
wick sticking up in it, but all kinds of patterns big and small were made
by proud inventors; they generally gave some light, though not a
brilliant one.
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