THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT 



[eth. aks. 18 



along the lower border are lashed pieces of deerhoru four to five inches 

 in length, which serve as weights and also as handles by which the 

 net can be hauled to the shore. A seine of twisted sinew cord similar 

 to the preceding, obtained at Hotham inlet (number 63612), is about 

 thirty inches in width, with a stretcher of wood at each end. It has 

 oval wooden floats and deerhorn and stone sinkers. 



A sraall-mesh seine of sinew cord, used for herring and whitefish, 

 obtained at Cape Prince of Wales, is shown in figure 53. It is nearly 



thirty inches wide, and has 

 wooden stretchers at each 

 end, a series of rounded, 

 tapering floats along the up- 

 per edge, and handle-like 

 sinkers of ivory along the 

 lower border. Another 

 small-mesh herring seine, 

 about five feet wide, obtained 

 at St Michael (figure 54), is 

 made from fine sealskin cord. 

 Along the bottom is strung a 

 series of small oval stone sink- 

 ers, notched above and below 

 to secure the lashings. 



Floats for nets are some- 

 times carved in the shape of 

 birds and in other forms. Fig- 

 ure 15, plate Lxx, represents 

 a float rudely fashioned in the 

 form of a grebe ; another, from 

 the lower Yukon (plate lxx, 

 8), represents the head of 

 a man and the flattened tail 

 of a bird. A float from St 

 Lawrence island (figure 55) 

 is round in cross section, 

 large in the middle, and 

 tapers gradually to both 

 ends, where there are slight 

 shoulders to retain the cords by which it is made fast. Others are 

 merely rounded blocks of wood, pierced for attachment to the net. 



In addition to the wooden floats, others are made from the inflated 

 bladders or stomachs of various animals. Figure 9, plate lxx, illus- 

 trates a set of three such floats and a wooden marker-float for use on 

 one end of the net. The latter is a thin, curved piece of wood in the 

 form of a thumbless hand, with a round, excav^ated depression in the 

 center, which, with the inside of the finger tips, is painted black. This 



Fig. 52— Mesh, float, and sinker of herring seine (J). 



