240 



REPORT OF NATIONAL MUSEUM, 1900. 



lieads backwanl and forward and snoring like a seal till they come so near them that 

 tlu'V ran reach the aniniul with their harpoons and strike them.' 



'Vho (ii-eeiilaiulors, siiys Nansen, iiso two foriiis of the gTeat harpoon ; 

 (1) tlu' L^nak, with butt end finished in a l)one knob; it is longer and 

 slightei- than (2) the Ernangnak, having- on its butt end two feathers 

 of Iwne, connnonly whale rib, to increase the weight and guide the 

 flight.' The line is made of young walrus {Odobmius rosraarus) or of 

 l)earded seal hide {Phoca harbata), from 15 to 18 

 yards long and one-fourth inch wide. The float is 

 th(^ skin of a young ringed seal {Phoca fmtida) taken 

 oft' whole, the hair removed, the apertures all tied 

 up, and the whole dried. The line is coiled on the 

 kaiak stand. ^ He calls the great Greenland and 

 Hudson Ba}^ harpoon, thrown from the hand with- 

 out the throwing stick, Sigagut. In the work above 

 refin-red to a spirited description of the haipoon 

 and its accessories will ])e found (pp. 62-64), with 

 figures. 



Before giving in detail the structure of the west- 

 ern Greenland harpoon, attention must again be 

 called to the difficulty of making neat distinctions. 

 Recent explorations by Peary especiall}^ assign 

 Smith Sound material to the Central Eskimo; at 

 least it is intermediate. The constancy of iron in 

 the oldest specimens also demands that no hasty con- 

 clusions ])e drawn concerning the original Eskimo 

 harpoon, either as to its design or ornamentation. 



A toggle head from Greenland (Cat. No. 9836, 

 U.S.N.M.), with a triangular blade of iron slightly 

 barbed on one corner, fastened into the slit by a 

 rivet of iron, is shown in fig. 24. The body is 

 conical; the line hole is cut across the body and 

 across the plane of the blade. It is an elliptical 

 opening, and its diameter is not in a line with the 

 It has one spur for a barb, and the socket for the 

 foreshaft is wide and shallow. It is the gift of S. F. Baird. 



A modern toggle head of a whale harpoon (Cat. No. 19.510, U.S.N.M.), 

 from Greenland, is seen in fig. 25. This unfinished specimen shows 

 the last step in the development of the machine-made toggle head. 

 P^vei'vthing about the specimen demonstrates this- — the mathematical 

 form, the .saw cut for the blade, the socket for the foreshaft, the angu- 

 lar ])arb, and especially the large line hole cut straight across the body 

 head. In the primitive examples this last feature cost 



Fig. 2-1. 

 TOGGLE HEAD. 



West Greenland. 



Collected by S. K. Buird. 



Cat. No. 9836. U.S.N.M. 



axis of the body. 



of the toggh 



' Egede's (Jreenland, pp. 102-106. 



^ Nansen, Across Greenland, 1898, p. 37, 



^Ideui., p. 33. 



