356 THE POINT BARROW ESKIMO. 
by a low wooden rail on each side. Each runner isa slice from a single 
large walrus tusk, with the butt at the back of the sled. The slats, 
which are pieces of a ship’s paneling, are lashed to the upper edge of 
the runners so as to project about one-half inch on each side. The rails 
flare slightly outward. The whole is fastened together by lashings of 
rather broad whalebone, passing through a hole near the upper edge of 
the runner, a notch in the end of the slat and a hole in the slat inside of 
the rail. There are two lashings at each end of each broad slat and 
one in the middle, ateach end of the narrow one. The last and the ones 
at each end of the sled also secure the rail by passing through a hole 
near its edge, in which are cut square notches to make room for the 
other lashings. The trace is a strip of seal thong about 5 feet long and 
one-fourth inch wide, split at one end for about 1 foot into two parts. 
The other end is slit in two for about 3 inches. This is probably a 
broken loop, which served for fastening the trace to a dog’s harness. 
I donotrecollect ever seeing so small a sled in actual use, though Lieut. 
Ray says he has frequently seen them drawn by one dog. The people 
who came down from Nuwitk with a small load of things for trade 
sometimes used a small unia about 3 feet long, with one dog, and the 
same was often used by the girls for bringing in firewood from the 
beach. 
A very peculiar sled was formerly used at Point Barrow, but we have 
no means of knowing how common it was. It was a sort of toboggan, 
made by lashing together lengthwise slabs of whalebone, but is now 
wholly obsolete, since whalebone has too high a market value to per- 
mit of: its being used for any such purpose. We obtained one speci- 
men about 10 feet long, but it was unfortunately im such a dilapidated 
condition that we were unable to bring it home. I find no previous 
mention of the use of such sleds by any Eskimo. It is not necessary 
to suppose that this sled is modeled after the toboggan of the Hudson 
Bay voyagers, of which these people might have obtained knowledge 
through the eastern natives, since the simple act of dragging home a 
“slab” of whalebone would naturally suggest this contrivance. 
We did bring home one small sled of this kind (No. 89875 [772], Fig. 
359, from Utkiavwin), which from its size was probably a child’s toy, 
though from its greasy condition it seems to have been used for drag- 
ging pieces of blubber. It is made of the tips of 6 small “slabs” of 
black whalebone, each about 2 inches wide at the broad end, and put 
together side by side so as to form a triangle 194 inches long and 92 
wide, the apex being the front of the sled, and the left-hand edge of each 
slab slightly overlapping the edge of the preceding. They are fastened 
together by three transverse bands, passing through loops in the upper 
surface of each slot, made by cutting two parallel longitudinal slits 
about one-half inch long and one-fourth inch apart part way through, 
and raising up the surface between them. The hindmost band is a 
strip of whalebone nearly one-half inch wide, passing through these 
