SLEDGES. BOATS. 405 



wading into the shallow lakes, can soon tire out and catch 

 the birds by hand/'* 



The so-called "Arctic Highlanders/' however, are said to 

 have no means of killing the reindeer, though it abounds in 

 their country ; nor have they the art of fishing, although, 

 curiously enough, they catch large numbers of birds in small 

 hand nets. Seals, bears, walrus, and birds constitute almost 

 the whole of their diet, f None of the American or Greenland 

 Esquimaux have succeeded in taming the reindeer. Dogs 

 are their only domestic animals, and are sometimes used in 

 hunting, but principally to draw the sledges. 



The sledges vary much both in materials and form: ac- 

 cording to Captain Lyon the best are made of the jawbones 

 of the whale, sawn to about two inches in thickness, 

 and from six inches to a foot in depth. These are the 

 runners, and are shod with a thin plank of the same material. 

 The sides are connected by pieces of bone, horn, or wood, 

 firmly lashed together. In Boothia Captain Ross saw sledges 

 in which the runners were made of salmon, packed into a 

 cylinder, rolled up in skins, and frozen together. In spring 

 the skins are made into bags, and the fish are eaten. J 

 Altogether these sledges are wonderfully constructed, when 

 it is considered with what simple tools they are made. 



Their boats also are very ingeniously built, and are of two 

 kinds, the kajak or men's boat, and the umiak or women's 

 boat. The kajak is from eighteen to twenty feet long, 

 eighteen inches broad in the middle, tapering to both ends, 

 and scarcely a foot deep. It has no outriggers, and is there- 

 fore very difficult to sit. It is quite covered over at the top, 

 with the exception of a hole in the middle, into which the 



* Lyon' s Journal, p. 338. 



f Kane, Arctic Explorations, vol. ii., pp. 208, 210. See also Richardson's 

 Arctic Expedition, vol. ii., p. 25 ; Simpson's Discoveries in North America, p. 347 ; 

 Ross, I.e. p. 585. 



J I.e. Appendix, p. 24. 



