496 DR. KANE'S EXPEDITION. 



fine dogs, with their sledges, and secured them within 

 two hundred feet of the brig, driving their lances into 

 the ice, and picketing the dogs to them by the seal-skin 

 traces. The animals understood the operation perfectly, 

 and lay down as soon as it commenced. The sledges 

 were made up of small fragments of porous bone, admira- 

 bly knit together by thongs of hide ; the runners, which 

 glistened like burnished steel, were of highly-polished 

 ivory, obtained from the tusks of the walrus. 



" The only arms they carried were knives, concealed 

 in their boots ; but their lances, which were lashed to 

 the sledges, were quite a formidable weapon. The staff 

 was of the horn of the narwhal, or else of the thigh-bones 

 of the bear, two lashed together ; or sometimes the 

 mirabilis of the walrus, three or four of them united. 

 This last was a favorite material, also, for the cross-bars 

 of their sledges. They had no wood. A single rusty 

 hoop from a current-drifted cask might have furnished 

 all the knives of the party ; but the fleam-shaped tips 

 of their lances were of unmistakable steel, and were 

 riveted to the tapering, bony point, wifrh no mean skill. 

 I learned afterward that the metal was obtained in traffic 

 from the more southern tribes. 



" They were clad much as I have described Metek, 

 in jumpers, boots, and white bear-skin breeches, with 

 their feet decorated like his, en griffe. A strip of knot- 

 ted leather worn round the neck, very greasy and dirty- 

 looking, which no one could be persuaded to part with 

 for an instant, was mistaken, at first, for an ornament 

 by the crew ; it was not until mutual hardships had 

 made us better acquainted that we learned its mys- 

 terious uses. 



" When they were first allowed to come on board, 

 they were very rude and difficult to manage. They 

 spoke three or four at a time, to each other and to us 



