He
knows how to do it. That is the life that he has been reared to live.
The average city man would perish in a day if left alone to care for
himself on a trapper's trail. He has never learned the business, and
he would not know how to take care of himself.
The Labradorman being both hunter and fisherman, is perfectly at home
both in the wilderness and on the sea. He has the dangers of both to
meet, but he does not recognize them as dangerous callings, though
every year some mate or neighbor loses his life. "'Tis the way o' th'
Lard."
Ice still covers the Labrador harbors in May, and this is when the
seal hunt begins, or, as the liveyere says, he goes "swileing." He
calls a seal a "swile." With a harpoon attached to a long line he
stations himself at a breathing hole in the ice which the seals under
the ice have kept open, and out of which, now and again, one raises
its nose and fills its lungs with air, for seals are animals, not
fish, and must have air to breathe or they will drown. The hole is a
small one, but large enough to cast the spear, or harpoon, into.
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