ESKIMO SLEDS COASTING. 69 



found in this kind of a sledge that par- 

 tially compensates for its great weight : 

 the bottom of the sledge-runners are 

 always perfectly smooth and slippery, 

 being of pure ice ; and when the sledge 

 party is on hard and level snow, but little 

 pulling is required much less, in fact, 

 than one would think to make rapid 

 progress with such a bulky and cumber- 

 some vehicle. 



So much easier will a sledge pull 

 when it has runners of ice, that, in the 

 Eskimo country, the ordinary wooden 

 sledges always have the bottoms of their 

 runners iced before they start on a day's 

 sledge journey. First, the sledge runner 

 is shod with a strip of bone cut from the 

 lower jaw of a whale into a long, thin 

 piece, like a batten, or small board, and a 

 trifle wider than the runner. This is 



