EXTRACTS. 263 



without bloodslied. The smaller species of whales they catch like seals, or drive 

 them into bays, till they run aground." (Vol. I, page 120). 



" They (the boats) are of two kinds, the greater and smaller. The great or 

 women's boat. Umiak, is commonly from six to eight or nine fathoms long, from 

 four to five feet broad, and three deep. It is narrowed to a point at each extrem- 

 ity, with a flat bottom. It is made of slender laths, about three fingers broad, 

 fastened down by whalebone, and covered with tanned seal-skin. Two ribs run 

 along the sides parallel to the keel, meeting together at the head and stern. 

 Across these three beams, thin spars are mortised in. Short posts are then fitted 

 to the ribs to support the gunwale ; and as they are liable to be forced outwards 

 by the pressure of the transverse benches for the rowers, of which there are ten 

 or twelve, they are hooped in on the outside by two gunwale ribs. The timbers 

 are not fastened by iron nails, which would soon rust and fret holes in the skin 

 coating, but by wooden pins or whalebone. The Greenlander performs his work 

 without line or square, taking the proportions by his eye, which he does with 

 great accuracy. The only tools which he employs for this and every other kind 

 of work, are a small saw, a chisel, which when fastened on a wooden handle 

 serves for a hatchet, a small gimlet, and a sharp-pointed pocket-knife.''' As soon 

 as the skeleton of the boat is completed, the woman covers it with thick seals' 

 leather, still soft from the dressing, and calks the interstices with old fat, so that 

 these boats are much less leaky than wooden ones, the seams swelling in the 

 water. They require however a new coating almost every year. 



" They are rowed by the women, commonly hy four at a time, while one man- 

 ages the helm. It Avould be scandalous for a man to interfere, except he were 

 warranted to snatch the oars by a case of extreme danger. 



" The oars are short with a broad palm like a shovel, and they are confined 

 to their places on the gunwale by leathern grooves. At the head of the boat, 

 they spread a sail of gutskins sewed together, two yards high and three broad. 

 Rich Greenlanders make their sails of fine white linen striped with red. But 

 they can only sail with the wind, and even then cannot keep u]:* with an European 

 boat. They have however this advantage, that they can make way with their 

 oars much faster in contrary winds or a calm. In these boats they undertake 

 voyages of from four to eight hundred miles north and south along the coast, 

 with their tents and all their goods, besides a complement of ten or twenty per- 

 sons. The men however keep them company in kajaks, breaking the force of 

 the waves when they run high, and, in case of necessity, holding the sides of the 



* These, of course, are not tbe original Eskimo tools, which were those of a stone-age people. Yet they 

 worked meteoric iron into instruments. The " Oompte-rendu du Oongres International d'AnthropoIogie et 

 d'Archeologie Prehistoriques, 6"» Session, Bruxelles, 1872," -'contains an interesting article by Professor J. S, 

 Steenstrup on the subject. It is entitled " Sur I'Emploi du Per Meteorique par les Esquimaux du Greenland." 



