NORTHERN OCEAN 311 



backs, much after the same manner as packs are, or used 

 formerly to be, on pack-horses. 



In the fall of the year, and as the Winter advances, those 

 people sew the skins of the deer's legs together in the shape 

 of long portmanteaus, which, when hauled on the snow as the 

 hair lies, are as slippery as an otter, and serve them as tem- 

 porary sledges while on the barren ground ; but when they 

 arrive at any woods, they then make proper sledges, with thin 

 boards of the larch-tree, generally known in Hudson's Bay by 

 the name of Juniper.^ 



[324] Those sledges are of various sizes, according to the 

 strength of the persons who are to haul them : some I have 

 seen were not less than twelve or fourteen feet long, and fifteen 

 or sixteen inches wide, but in general they do not exceed eight 

 or nine feet in length, and twelve or fourteen inches in breadth. 



The boards of which those sledges are composed are not 

 more than a quarter of an inch thick, and seldom exceed five 

 or six inches in width ; as broader would be very unhandy for 

 the Indians to work, who have no other tools than an ordinary 

 knife, turned up a little at the point, from which it acquires 

 the name of Bafe-hoth among the Northern Indians, but 

 among the Southern tribes it is called Mo-co-toggan. The 

 boards are sewed together with thongs of parchment deer- 

 skin, and several cross bars of wood are sewed on the upper 

 side, which serves both to strengthen the sledge and secure 

 the ground-lashing, to which the load is always fastened by 

 other smaller thongs, or stripes of leather. The head or fore- 

 part of the sledge is turned up so as to form a semi-circle, 

 of at least fifteen or twenty inches diameter. This prevents 

 the carriage from diving into light snow, and enables it to 

 slide over the inequalities and hard drifts of snow which are 

 constantly met with on the open plains and barren grounds. 

 The trace or draught-line to those sledges is a double string, 



\} Larix lariuna (Du Roi.).] 



