A Musk -Ox Hunt. 327 



seen to do when closely pressed and brought to bay ; but they are so 

 seldom hunted that we may suppose their head and horns are used 

 in removing the snow from the mossy patches where they graze in 

 the winter-time. Their horns, from their peculiar shape, would 

 certainly make excellent snow shovels. 



The shape of these weapons of defense is certainly most peculiar. 

 Starting from the median line of the forehead, at which point the 

 horns are joined base to base, they present a thick, flat plate, or 

 shield, of corrugated horn almost a foot in width. As these flat 

 shields circle around the eyes, about four inches from them, the 

 outer edges are gradually incurvated until, about half way between 

 the eyes and nostrils, a perfect horn is formed. From here it 

 tapers, curling upward near its extremity with a jauntiness worthy 

 of a Limerick hook. To the natives of the north, these horns 

 afford many implements of the chase and household utensils. They 

 thoroughly understand the well-known principle of steaming the 

 horn in order to render it soft while it is being worked. 



The native bow is usually made of two or three sections of 

 musk-ox horn, tipped with the shorter horn of the reindeer, the 

 whole being firmly lashed with braid made from the sinew on the 

 superficial dorsal muscles of the reindeer, a cluster of these braids 

 about as thick as a man's middle finger running the length of the 

 back of the bow to give it strength and elasticity. I found the 

 Eskimos of King William's Land and vicinity using copper 

 stripped from Sir John Franklin's ships to rivet their bows to- 

 gether. The Eskimo bow is not in any way equal to the Indian 

 bow, seldom being effective at over forty or fifty yards with such 

 game as the reindeer. Except as children's playthings, bows have 

 entirely disappeared, wherever intercourse with the Hudson's Bay 

 Company or American whalers has placed fire-arms in the hands 

 of the natives, and this includes the whole of the great Eskimo 

 family (or Innuits, as they should be properly called), except those 

 stretched along the shores of the Arctic Ocean from about King 

 William's Land on the east to the farthest point reached by Ameri- 

 can whalers from the Pacific on the west. 



A camp is always picked near a lake which the Eskimos know, 

 by certain signs, has not yet frozen to the bottom. This fact is 

 ascertained by placing their pug noses in close proximity to the 



