ESQUIMAU PRESENTS. 245 



In consideration for the kindness wliich I had shown 

 these people, they gave me a set of their hunting and 

 domestic implements, the principal of them being a 

 lance, harpoon, coil of line, a rabbit-trap, a lamp, pot, 

 flint and steel, with some lamp-wick and tinder. The 

 lance was a wooden shaft, probably from Dr. Kane's 

 lost ship, the Advance, with an iron spike lashed firmly 

 to one end of it, and a piece of walrus tusk, shod with 

 sharp iron, at the other. The harpoon staff was a 

 narwal tooth or horn, six feet long, — a very hard 

 and solid piece of ivory, and perfectly straight. The 

 harpoon head was a piece of walrus tusk, three inches 

 long, with a hole through the centre for the line, a 

 hole into one end for the sharpened point of the staff, 

 and at the other end it was, like the lance-head, tipped 

 with iron. The line was simply a strip of raw seal- 

 hide about fifty feet long, and was made by a contin- 

 uous cut around the body of the seal. The rabbit- 

 trap was merely a seal-skin line with a multitude of 

 loops dangling from it. The lamp was a shallow dish 

 of soft soap-stone, in shape not unlike a clam-shell, 

 and was eight inches by six. The pot was a square- 

 sided vessel of the same material. The flint was a 

 piece of hard granite, the steel a lump of crude iron 

 pyrites, the wdck was dried moss, and the tinder the 

 delicate down-like covering of the wallow catkins. 



Tcheitchenguak told me that he Vv^as preparing the 

 lances for a walrus hunt, and that he and Hans in- 

 tended to try their skill on the morrow. The walrus 

 had been very numerous in the open waters outside 

 the harbor all through the winter, and their shrill cry 

 could be heard at almost any time from the margin 

 of the ice. The flesh of these animals is the staple 

 food of the Esquimaux ; and although they prize the 



