306 THE POINT BAKROW ESKIMO. 



sharp edge of ivory is the tool universally employed whenever snow is 

 to be shoveled, either to clear it away or for excavating houses or pit 

 falls in the snowdrifts, or chinking &quot; up the crevices in the walls of 

 the snow house, and i.s an indispensable part of the traveler s outfit in 

 winter. The shovels (pl ksun) are all made on essentially the same pat 

 tern, which is well shown by Fig. 306, No. 50739 (30). The blade i.s 14 

 inches broad and 11 long. The whole upper surface of the shovel 

 is flat. The handle is beveled off on the side to a rounded edge 

 below, and is quite thick where it joins the blade, tapering off to the tip. 

 The blade is thick and abruptly rounded off on the upper edge below 

 and gradually thinned down to the edge. The edge of the wood is 

 fitted with a tongue into a grove in the top of the ivory edge, which is 

 1 inches deep. It is fastened on by wooden tree-nails at irregular 

 intervals, and at one end, where, the edge of the groove has been broken, 

 by a stitch of black whalebone. The wooden part of the shovel is made 

 of four unequal pieces of spruce, neatly fitted and doweled together 

 and held by the ivory edge and three stitches of black whalebone 

 close to the upper edge, and countersunk below the flat surface. The 

 whippings of sinew braid on the handle are to give a firm grip for 

 the hands. 



No. 5G73cS [27], Fig. 3006, is a similar shovel of the same material 

 and almost exactly the same dimensions, figured to show the way it 

 has been pieced together and mended. The maker of this shovel was 

 able to procure a broad piece of wood which only had to be pieced out 

 with a narrow strip on the left side, which is fastened on as before. It 

 was, however, not long enough to make the whole of the handle, which 

 has a piece 8 inches long, neatly scarfed on at the end and secured by 

 six stout treenails of wood; three at each end of the .joint, passing 

 through the thin part of the scarf into the thick, but not through the latter. 

 Nearly the whole handle was seized with sinew braid put on as before, 

 but much of this seizing is broken off . At the right side of the blade 

 the grain takes a twist, bringing it parallel to the ivory edge,, and ren 

 dering it liable to split, as has happened from the warping of the ivory 

 since the shovel has been in the Museum. The owner sought to pre 

 vent this by fastening to the edge a stout &quot; strap &quot; of walrus ivory 4 

 inches, which appears to be an old bird spear point. The lower end of 

 this fitted into the groove of the ivory edge, and it was held on by three 

 equidistant lashings of narrow whalebone, each running through a 

 hole in the edge of the wood and round the ivory in a deep transverse 

 groove. 



This pattern of snow shovel is very like that from Iglulik, figured by 

 Capt. Lyon, but the handle of the latter is so much shorter in propor 

 tion to the blade that there is an additional handle like that of a pot 

 lid near the head of the blade on the upper surface. The ivory edge 

 also appears to be fastened on wholly with stitches. 



1 Parry s Second Voy., pi. opposite p. 548, Fitf. 5. 



