MURDOCH.] CLOTHING. 109 



blo of the ancient Aleut and the elaborate lamp of the Point Barrow 

 Eskimo are evidently the two extremes of the series of forms, but the 

 intermediate patterns are still to be described. 



Fig. 50, No. 504!t2 [108], is a peculiar article of which only one specimen 

 was collected. We were given to understand at the time of purchasing 

 it that it was a sort of socket or escutcheon to be fastened to the wall 

 above a lam]) to hold the blubber stick described above. No such 

 escutcheons, however, were seen in use in the houses visited. The 

 article is evidently old. It is a flat piece of thick plank of some soft 

 wood, 11-4 inches long, 4-2 broad, and about li thick, very rudely carved 

 into a human head and body without arms, with a large round hole 

 about 1^ inches in diameter through the middle of the breast. The eyes 

 and mouth are incised, and the nose was in relief, but was long ago split 

 off. There is a deep furrow all around the head, perhaps for fastening 

 on a hood. 



CLOTHING. 



MATERIAL. 



The clothing of these people, is as a rule made entirely of skins, though 

 of late years drilling and calico are used for some parts of the dress 

 which will be afterwards described. Petroff 1 makes the rather sur 

 prising statement that &quot; a large amount of ready-made clothing finds its 

 way into the hands of these people, who wear it in summer, but the ex 

 cessive cold of winter compels them to resume the fur garments formerly 

 in general use among them.&quot; Fur garments are in as general use at 

 Point Barrow as they ever were, and the cast-off clothing obtained from 

 the ships is mostly packed away in some corner of the iglu. We landed 

 at Cape Smyth not long after the wreck of the Daniel Webster, whose 

 erew had abandoned and given away a great deal of their clothing. 

 During that autumn a good many men and boys wore white men s coats 

 or shirts in place of the outer frock, especially when working or loung 

 ing about the station, but by the next spring these were all packed 

 away and were not resumed again except in rare instances in the sum 

 mer. 



The chief material is the skin of the reindeer, which is used in various 

 stages of pelage. Fine, short-haired summer skins, especially those of 

 does and fawns, are used for making dress garments and underclothes. 

 The heavier skins are ilsed for everyday working clothes, while the 

 heaviest winter skins furnish extra warm jackets for cold weather, 

 warm winter stockings and mittens. The white or spotted skins of the 

 tame Siberian reindeer, obtained from the &quot;Nunatafimiun,&quot; are espe 

 cially valued for full-dress jackets. We heard no mention of the use of 

 the skin of the unborn reindeer fawn, but there is a kind of dark deer 

 skin used only for edgings, which appears to be that of an exceedingly 

 young deer. This skin is extremely thin, and the hair so short that it 

 is almost invisible. Siberian deerskins can always be recognized by 



1 Kcport, etc., p. 125. 



