40 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT fEXHANN. 18 



All along tbe coast where seals are liuiited on the ice during the 

 spring months, huge mittens of white bearskin or white dogskin are 

 made to reach from the hand to a little above the elbows. These are 

 worn by the hunters, while creeping prone ui)on the ice, to serve as a 

 shield, the left arm being carried bent across in front of the face and 

 head as the hunter sh)wly creeps along. The bushy white hair on the 

 mitten, being similar in color to the surface of the snow, serves as a blind 

 to prevent the seal from observing the approach of the hunter. 



FOOT-WEAK 



Among the Eskimo boots are the most common style of foot-wear; 

 they are made with a hard-tanned sealskin sole and a top reaching just 

 below the knee. The tops are generally of sealskin tanned with the 

 hair left on, or of reindeer-skin tanned in the same manner. The seal- 

 skin boots of this class may have the hair side worn either inward or 

 outAvardj for this pur{)ose the skin of the PJiocaUihdina is most com- 

 monly used. When topped with reindeer skin, the hair is worn usually 

 outward. The feet and ankles, of the latter variety of boots are made 

 of reindeer skin in the brown, short-hair summer coat; the legs are 

 made usually in some pattern formed by combining pieces of the white- 

 hair skin from the belly of a reindeer with strips of brown-hair skin 

 from the l^gs of that animal. For this purpose skin from the white- 

 hair tame' tein deer of Siberia is highly prized. The tops of the boot- 

 legs are surrounded usually by one or two bands of white-hair deerskin 

 with the fur shaved close to present a velvety surface, the seams along 

 these borders having narrow strips of black skin welted in with little 

 tufts of red worsted strung along some of the seams. Between these 

 bands of shaved skin and the lower portion of the legs commonly is 

 sewed a strip of wolverine skin, with long projecting hair, and gener- 

 ally two or more little tassels of the same kind of skin hanging before 

 and behind. The soles are of hard, oil-tanned sealskin bent up around 

 the border and crimped about the heel and the toe by means of a 

 smooth, pointed ivory crimper. The uppers are frequently sewed 

 directly to the sealskin soles, but sometimes a narrow intervening 

 strip of tanned sealskin is sewed in around the border. A long, nar- 

 row strip of rawhide has one end sewed to the sole on each side of 

 the ankle to fasten the boot to the foot. These straps are raised and 

 drawn across the rear just above the heel and then passed around in 

 front of the ankle and back again, and may be tied either in front 

 or on the sides. At the top the boots are fastened tightly over the 

 trousers by means of a drawstring. This style of boot is common from 

 the lower Yukon to the Arctic coast northward of Kotzebue sound. 

 The specimen from Kotzebue sound shown in j^late xxi, 12, is a typical 

 example of this style of foot-wear, but the pattern of ornamentation 

 varies according to individual fancy. 



