INHABITANTS OF THE KUBILS. 21 



and shirts were much in demand ; but coats, waistcoats, hats, and 

 boots were comparatively useless to them. 



A cap of sealskin, and mocassins reaching to the knee, the 

 uppers made of sea-lion or seal hide, and the feet of the rubber-like 

 skin of sea-lion flippers, completed their outfit. One or two of the 

 Shumshir natives possessed a suit of foreign clothes and a Russian 

 peaked cap. 



The boats used by these Kurilsky Ainu were peculiar to them- 

 selves. They were most ingeniously constructed, and, considering 

 the poor tools, the materials of which they were built, and the way 

 in which they were put together, were good serviceable craft. 

 Some of them were about 30 feet long, 5.^ feet broad, and about 

 4 feet deep. 



They were built with considerable shear. The stem and stern 

 posts were made of a thick plank bent into a rounded form, ex- 

 tending from the keel plank, and carried up about a foot and a 

 half above the level of the gunwale, the ends or heads being shaped 

 into a spear-head form. Inside, the boat was strengthened by 

 frames and knees. The broad planks outside were placed edge to 

 edge, shaped to coincide with the shear, and made to meet as 

 neatly as their rough tools would allow. Over the seams half- 

 round battens, about an inch wide, were placed, and kept in 

 position by lashings of whale sinews or whalebone fibres, which 

 passed through small holes made in the planks just above and 

 below the batten. These lashings were continued all along the 

 seams at intervals of about 6 or 8 inches. Each one was 

 finished off" separately, not carried on from one to another, the 

 sinews being passed round and round over the battens and through 

 the holes. The holes were then tightly plugged with wooden 

 pegs, and the seams inside calked with moss. In the same manner 

 lashings were passed through holes in the planks round the timbers 

 and knees. The gunwale, thwarts, strengthening pieces, etc., were 

 all fastened in this way, and so a good serviceable though rough 

 boat was constructed without a nail or a piece of metal of any 

 kind being used in it. Short oars, worked on pins or in grom- 

 mets of sea-lion hide, were used to propel the boat. A mast 

 and an old sail, probably got out of some wreck, completed the 

 outfit. 



Previous to the removal of those Kurilsky who choose to 



