646 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



" nocks " for the bowstring. Some bows were straight, and some 

 turned up at the ends like a Tartar bow. 



Now, to " back " such a bow as this they would take one piece 

 of twine, forty or fifty yards long. This twine is made of a 

 three-ply braid of reindeer sinew, about the size of common twine 

 such as we use for tying parcels, and serves the Eskimos for a 

 great variety of purposes. One end is looped round one nock of 

 the bow, and about twenty strands are strung up and down the 

 back of the bow, from one end to the other. Then they began to 

 lay on strands that ran only between the weakest parts of the 

 bow that is, the points about half a foot from each end. Here 

 these strands were fastened with very complicated hitches, mak- 

 ing a sort of " whipping " round the bow. When there were 

 enough strands put on to make a couple of cords about as big as 

 a lead pencil, an ingenious tool was used to twist each up tight 

 from the middle, and the whole was whipped down securely with 

 the end of the cord. It is easy to see how drawing the bow would 

 stretch these twisted cords and make them fly back with great 

 force when the string was released, while all these lashings and 

 whippings not only hold the cords tight to the bow, but also com- 

 press the fibers of the wood like the whippings on a fishing rod, 

 and prevent cracking. The hitches and knots, besides, are put on 

 in such a way that straining the backing draws every lashing 

 tighter. The bowstring was also of the same plaited sinew. 



The arrows were very neatly made of some light wood, and 

 feathered with two or rarely three narrow feathers, generally made 

 from the quill of some bird of prey, and neatly lashed on. They 

 had four kinds of arrows. The bear arrow in old times always 

 had a regular flint arrowhead, made by flaking, such as so many 

 savages used, and which are found in such quantities all over the 

 country wherever the Indians used to live. They still preserve 

 the art of making these at Point Barrow, and made a number of 

 beautiful arrow points for sale to us. But they never learned 

 how to make a flint arrowhead with barbs, and so they sometimes 

 made their bear arrows with a barbed head of bone tipped with 

 flint. Driven by such a strong bow these arrows were very ef- 

 fective, and, if no bone was in the way, were sometimes driven 

 clean through the body of a polar bear. As they came more in 

 contact with white men, they took to tipping both kinds of bear 

 arrows with bits of metal, brass, iron, or steel when they could 

 get them. I brought home a couple of arrows tipped each with 

 one blade of a pair of scissors, filed into an arrowhead. 



For hunting the reindeer the arrow had a long, sharp, bayonet- 

 shaped head made of antler, barbed on one edge and fitted loosely 

 into the shaft. As the Eskimos told us, when they hit a deer 

 with one of these arrows the shaft could drop out, leaving the- 



