ESKIMO BOATS IN THE NORTHWEST. 685 



ers. These canoes are very narrow and easily capsized. One 

 which, we brought home, and which is now in the National Mu- 

 seum at Washington, is nineteen feet long with only eighteen 

 inches beam, and is just deep enough to hold a man's legs under 

 the deck, which is arched for a short distance forward of the 

 hole. It weighs only thirty-two pounds. The framework of the 

 Icaydk is very light. The stoutest of all the parts are two strips 

 or gunwales one on each side, about three inches wide and half 

 an inch thick, kept apart by slender deck-beams, which are long- 

 est, of course, in the middle of the boat. The ribs are hoops bent 

 into the shape of the letter U, and there are forty or fifty of them 

 mortised into the lower edge of the gunwale, while they are kept 

 in place by slender strips of wood lashed along outside of them 

 from stem to stern. A stout deck-beam across the back of the 

 hole for the rower to lean against and a hoop round the edge of 

 the hole complete the frame of the boat. It is all fastened to- 

 gether, like that of the umiak, with wooden pegs and lashings of 

 fine whalebone. Such a boat is covered with five or six skins of 

 the smallest seal, carefully dressed with the hair and black epi- 

 dermis or outer skin removed. These skins when freshly pre- 

 pared are of a beautiful cream- white color, which soon turns, how- 

 ever, to dull yellow. These six skins are sewed together side by 

 side, the head of one skin to the tail of the next. Then the cover 

 is thoroughly wet, the boat is laid down on it, and the edges of 

 the cover stretched up over the deck as tightly as possible and 

 sewed together in an irregular seam, running lengthwise along 

 the deck. Finally, the edges round the hole are stretched over 

 the hoop and firmly laced with a thong. This finishes the boat, 

 except for making some loops on the deck fore and aft to hold 

 spears and such things, or whatever load the man may wish to 

 carry. 



When a Point-Barrow Eskimo is simply traveling along and 

 does not care to make any great speed, he uses an ordinary paddle 

 with one blade, like those used in the umiak., but somewhat lighter. 

 As he has to sit in the very middle of the boat, he can not use this 

 as an Indian would, wholly on one side, driving the boat ahead 

 with straight strokes and overcoming the tendency of the canoe 

 to go off to one side by feathering his paddle in the water or by 

 an outward sweep of the blade. First he makes three or four 

 strokes, say, on the right side, and then, as the boat begins to 

 sheer off to the left, he lifts the paddle out of the water and makes 

 three or four strokes on the left side till she begins to sheer to 

 the right, and so on. They do this pretty skillfully, so that the 

 boat makes a tolerably straight "wake," and goes through the 

 water at a pretty fair rate, but, of course, can make no great 

 speed. 



