136 RELIQULE AQUITANIOE. 



through two skins in process of being sewn together. The short Needles must 

 have been far more appropriate for this kind of work, as, indeed, we see at the 

 present day with tailors and sempstresses in sewing cloth and thick linen or 

 cotton stuffs. 



Among the ancients long and very slender needles, of which bronze examples 

 have been met with, served probably for working embroidery or tapestry (acus 

 Phrygian ; acus Babylonis). May it not be necessary, therefore, to explain the 

 use of the long needles among the Cave-folk of Perigord by supposing that their 

 women had other handiwork with the needle besides the simple sewing of 

 garments to cover the body and protect it from the rigours of the climate ? 

 Excepting this, we must admit that we have no foundation for supposing that 

 these Aborigines had any notion of the use of textile vegetable matters in 

 preparing tissues ; for among the remains of their household industry there is 

 not known at present any relic of the distaff, or of those loom-weights which are 

 of frequent occurrence among the remains of the Lake-habitations of Switzerland 

 and also in other Stations of that more recent age when a knowledge of the art of 

 weaving coarse stuffs of linen thread had grown up. 



Scheffer, whom we have already had occasion to cite, mentions also, in his 

 ' History of Lapland,' that the Lap women are very prodigal of embroidered 

 ornament, not only on their own clothing, but also on various little articles of 

 everyday use to which the ornament can be applied as, for instance, the sledge- 

 harness of the Reindeers. It is, however, in the embroidering of bands for different 

 parts of their garments that they especially excel. 



The same love for ornaments of needlework shows itself among the Esquimaux 

 women. The Danish Missionary, Hans Egede, who in the beginning of the 

 Eighteenth Century had sojourned many years among the aboriginal Green- 

 landers, gives the following details respecting the women's toilet* : "Next the 

 body they wear a waistcoat made of young fawns' skins, with the hairy side 

 inwards. The coat, or upper garment, is also made of fine coloured swans' skins 

 (or, in defect of that, of seal skins) trimmed and edged with white, and nicely 

 wrought in the seams and about the brim, which looks very well." 



In the third volume of the ' Description of all the Nations of the Russian Empire,' 

 cited above (p. 132), are given details, of a similar kind, respecting the costumes of 

 the inhabitants of some islands of Behring Straits, to the east of Kamtschatka, and 

 belonging to the Aleutian group. At the time when the account was written 



* A Description of Greenland &c. By M. Hans Egede. Translated from the Danish. 8vo, London, 1745, 

 p. 131. 



