FIRE. IMPLEMENTS. 401 



ever, as well as from others which will presently be re- 

 corded, it may be doubted whether this is really the case. 

 Esquimaux do not use fire to warm their dwellings ; cookery 

 is with them a refinement, and even the melting of snow 

 might be effected by the natural heat of the body. In fact, 

 those Esquimaux who live on reindeer, more than on seal, 

 having little blubber, make small use of fire. 



In the South the men have bows and arrows, harpoons, 

 spears, lines, fish,- hooks, knives, snow -knives, ice -chisels, 

 snow- shovels, groovers, drill-bows, drills, etc. The women 

 have lamps and stone-kettles, lamp-moss, pieces of iron- 

 pyrites, bone needles, pieces of sinew, scrapers (figs. 76-78), 

 horn spoons, sealskin vessels, pointed bones, marrow- spoons, 

 and knives. They have generally also, according to Dr. Rae, 

 a small piece of stone, bone, or ivory, about six inches long 

 and half an inch thick ; this is used for arranging the wicks 

 of the lamps. 



Kane gives the following inventory of an Esquimaux hut 

 visited by him : a sealskin cup, for gathering and holding 

 water ; the shoulder-blade of a walrus, to serve as a lamp ; a 

 large flat stone to support it ; another large, thin, flat, stone 

 to support the melting snow ; a lance-head, with a long coil 

 of walrus line ; a stand for clothes ; and the clothes them- 

 selves completed the whole worldly goods of this poor family.* 

 On their travelling expeditions even less than this is neces- 

 sary ; raw meat and a fur bag are all that they require. 



The implements of the Esquimaux are few and simple, but 

 very ingenious. The women use knives of a semicircular 

 form, and very similar to the curious semilunar knives (pi. 1, 

 fig. 3) which are so common in Denmark. They are, how- 

 ever, now made of metal, which the Southern Esquimaux have 

 been enabled to obtain, though in small quantities, from the 



* Kane's Arctic Explorations, vol. i,, p. 381. 



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