MODES OF HUNTING AND FISHING. 505 



America : a number of stones or walrus teeth being fastened 

 to short pieces of string, and all the strings then tied together 

 at the other end.* The spears, which are intended to be 

 thrown at birds or other small animals, have a double fork at 

 the extremity, and three other barbed points near the middle. 

 These diverge in different directions, so that if the end pair 

 should miss, one of the central trio might strike the victim. 

 Aquatic birds are also caught in whalebone nooses ; but the 

 " moulting season is the great bird-harvest, as a few persons 

 wading into the shallow lakes can soon tire out the birds and 

 catch them by hand."^ 



The so-called "Arctic Highlanders," however, are said to 

 have no means of killing the reindeer, though it abounds in 

 their country ; nor have they the art of fishing, although, 

 curiously enough, they catch large numbers of birds in small 

 hand-nets. Seals, bears, walrus, and birds, constitute almost 

 the whole of their diet, j Neither the American nor Green- 

 land Esquimaux have succeeded in taming the reindeer. Dogs 

 are their only domestic animals, and are sometimes used in 

 hunting, but principally to draw the sledges. 



The sledges vary much both in materials and form : accord- 

 ing to Captain Lyon, the best are made of the jaw-bones of 

 the whale, sawn to about two inches in thickness, and from 

 six inches to a foot in depth. These are the runners, and are 

 shod with a thin plank of the same material. The sides are 

 connected by pieces of bone, horn, or wood, firmly lashed 

 together. In Boothia, Captain Eoss saw sledges in which the 

 runners were made of salmon, packed into a cylinder, rolled 

 up in skins, and frozen together. In spring the skins are 

 made into bags, and the fish are eaten. Altogether these 



* Simpson, 1. c. p. 156. vol. ii. p. 25 ; Simpson's Discove- 



t Lyon's Journal, p. 338. ries in North America, p. 347 ; 



J Kane, Arctic Explorations, Ross, 1. c. p. 585. 



vol. ii. pp. 208, 210. See also 1. c. Appendix, p. 24. 



Richardson's Arctic Expedition, 



