ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 169 



back of the bow, but is braided or twisted into a cord the size of 

 stout whip-cord, which is laid on in a continuous piece so that there 

 are numerous strands of the elastic cord, running along the back of the 

 bow so as to be stretched when the bow is drawn. The simplest or, so 

 to speak, ancestral pattern of sinew-backed bow from which the types 

 now in use are evidently derived is one in which there are a dozen 

 or twenty of such plain strands along the back, running around 

 the "nocks" and held down by knotting the end of the cord 

 round the handle. Bows of this form, slightly modified by having 

 the cords somewhat twisted from the middle, so as to increase their 

 tension, are still to be found in Baffin Land, where many of the arts 

 seem in a lower state of development than among the Greenlanders, 

 on the one hand, or the Western Eskimos, on the other. Let us 

 now consider how in course of time the different branches of the 

 Eskimo race have improved upon this simple invention. Along the 

 well-wooded shores of southern Alaska, from the island of Kadiak 

 nearly to the mouth of the Yukon, where there is plenty of fresh, 

 living spruce, they have chiefly increased the efficiency of the bow 

 by lengthening and broadening it, and have paid but little atten- 

 tion to the sinew backing, contenting themselves with slightly in- 

 creasing the number of strands, wrapping them round with a spiral 

 seizing, which prevents them from spreading, and occasionally add- 

 ing a few more strands which only extend part way to the tips, 

 being secured by hitches round the bow. This makes the bow a 

 little stiffer in the middle than at the ends, where less strength is 

 required. On the other hand, the people who live along the tree- 

 I less shores of the Arctic Ocean, from the Mackenzie river to Ber- 

 ing Strait, can obtain no wood better than the dead and weathered 

 spruce which the sea casts upon the beach. Consequently, all im- 

 provements in the weapon were of necessity confined to the sinew 

 backing, which has developed into a marvel of craiplication and 

 perfection, while the bow itself is rather short and not especially 

 stout. Starting as before with a loop at one end of the cord strands 

 are laid on from nock to nock until there are enough of them to 

 give sufficient stiffness to the ends of the bow. Then the cord goes 

 only to within 6 or 8 inches of the tip and is secured round the 

 bow by hitches, sometimes a very complicated lashing of as many 

 as a dozen half hitches alternately in opposite directions, and returns 

 to a corresponding place at the other end, where it is similarly 

 hitched. In this way strand after strand is laid on, each pair shorter 



