316 PREHISTORIC FISHING. 



They have acquired great dexterity in managing these paddles, by constant use ; 

 for sails are no part of their art of navigation. 



" Their implements for fishing and hunting, which are both ingeniously 

 contrived, and well made, are nets, hooks and lines, harpoons, gigs, and an in- 

 strument like an oar. This last is about twenty feet long, four or five inches 

 broad, and about half an inch thick. Each edge, for about two-thirds of its 

 length (the other third being its handle), is set with sharp bone-teeth, about two 

 inches long. Herrings and sardines, and such other small fish as come in shoals, 

 are attacked with this instrument ; which is struck into the shoal, and the fish 

 are caught, either upon or between the teeth. Their hooks are made of bone and 

 wood, and rather inartificially ; but the harpoon, with which they strike the 

 whales and lesser sea animals, shews a great reach of contrivance. It is com- 

 posed of a i^iece of bone, cut into two barbs, in which is fixed the oval blade of 

 a large muscle shell, in which is the point of the instrument. To this is fastened 

 about two or three fathoms of rope ; and to throw this harpoon, they use a shaft 

 of about twelve or fifteen feet long, to which the line or rope is made fast ; and 

 to one end of which the harpoon is fixed, so as to separate from the shaft, and 

 leave it floating upon the water as a buoy, when the animal darts away with the 



harpoon. As to the materials, of which they make their various 



articles, it is to be observed, that every thing of the rope kind, is formed either 

 fi-om thongs of skins, and sinews of animals ; or from the same flaxen substance 

 of which their mantles are manufactured. The sinews often appeared to be of 

 such a length, that it might be presumed they could be of no other animal than 

 the whale. And the same may be said of the bones of which they make their 

 weapons already mentioned ; such as their bark-beating instruments, the points 

 of their spears, and the barbs of their harpoons." (Page 327, etc.). 



[Inhabitants of Prince William's Sound, present Territory of Alaska]. 

 " Their boats or canoes are of two sorts ; the one being large and open, and the 

 other small and covered. I mentioned already, that in one of the large boats 

 were twenty women, and one man, besides children. I attentively examined and 

 compared the construction of this, with Crantz's descrijjtion of what he calls the 

 great, or women's boat in Greenland, and found that they were built in the same 

 manner, parts like parts, with no other difference than in the form of the head 

 and stern ; particularly of the first, which bears some resemblance to the head 

 of a whale. The framing is of slender pieces of wood, over which the skins of 

 seals, or of other larger sea-animals, are stretched, to compose the outside. It 

 appeared also, that the small canoes of these people are made nearly of the same 

 form, and of the same materials with those used by the Greenlanders and Esqui- 

 maux ; at least the difiference is not material. Some of these, as I have before 

 observed, carry two men. They are broader in proportion to their length than 



