506 SLEDGES. BOATS. 



* 



sledges are well constructed, when it is considered with what 

 simple tools they are made. 



The dogs by which these sledges are drawn are by no 

 means easy to manage. Each has a separate trace attached 

 to the front of the sledge, passing between the legs, and 

 fastened in front to a collar. The dogs therefore are nearly 

 abreast, and the traces are very liable to become entangled. 

 The team is guided by throwing the lash of the whip on one 

 side or the other, and repeating certain words. " Wooa," as 

 among our carters, means " Stop." 



Their boats are also very ingeniously built, and are of two 

 kinds, the kajak or men's boat, and the umiak or women's 

 boat. The kajak is from eighteen to twenty feet long, eighteen 

 inches broad in the middle, tapering to both ends, and scarcely 

 a foot deep. It has no outriggers, and is therefore very diffi- 

 cult to sit. It is quite covered over at the top, with the 

 exception of a hole in the middle, into which the Esquimaux 

 puts his legs. The boat therefore cannot fill with water, and 

 even if it upsets, they can right it again by a sudden jerk of 

 the oar, or rather paddle. Indeed, a skilful Esquimaux will 

 turn somersaults in the water, in his boat, with great ease. 

 In spite of this, they are frequently drowned ; and indeed so 

 dangerous is the navigation that they generally go in pairs, so 

 as to assist one another on an emergency, for the skin sides of 

 the kajak are very thin, and if they come in contact with any 

 of the floating ice or drift-timber which abound in the Green- 

 land seas, are liable to be torn open, in which case the unfor- 

 tunate Esquimaux has little chance of saving himself. The 

 umiak is much larger, and has a flat bottom. It is made of 

 slender laths, fastened together with whalebone, and covered 

 over with sealskins. The Esquimaux observed by Boss, at 

 the northern end of Baffin's Bay, were entirely without canoes, 

 and were " ignorant, even traditionally, of the existence of a 



Parry's Three Voyages for the Discovery of a N.W. Passage, vol. iv. 

 p. 310. 



