406 THE KAJAK AND UMIAK. 



Esquimaux puts his legs. The boat therefore cannot fill with 

 water, and even if it upsets, they can right it again by a sudden 

 jerk of the oar, or rather paddle. Indeed, a skilful Esquimaux 

 will turn somersets in the water, in his boat, with great ease. 

 In spite of this they are frequently drowned, and indeed so 

 dangerous is the navigation that they generally go in pairs, 

 so as to assist one another on an emergency, for the skin 

 sides of the kajak are very thin, and if they come in contact 

 with any of the floating ice or drift-timber which abound in 

 the Greenland seas, are liable to be torn open, in which 

 case the unfortunate Esquimaux has little chance of saving 

 himself. The umiak is much larger and has a flat bottom. 

 It is made of slender laths, fastened together with whale- 

 bone, and covered over with sealskins. The Esquimaux 

 observed by Eoss, at the northern end of Baffin's Bay, were 

 entirely without canoes, and were "ignorant, even tradi- 

 tionally, of the existence of a boat."* It is, as he justly 

 observes, an extraordinary thing to find " a maritime and a 

 fishing tribe unacquainted with any means of floating on the 

 water ; " but we must remember that they had no wood, and 

 that there were only a few weeks in the year when the sea 

 was unfrozen. No wonder that Hoss's ships were mistaken 

 for living creatures, f and that his boats excited the most 

 unbounded astonishment and admiration. Kane also J con- 

 firms the absence of boats, but he adds " that the kayack was 

 known to them traditionally/' 



In the preparation of skins the Esquimaux use certain 

 stone instruments (figs. 76-78), which have frequently been 

 over-looked on account of their simplicity, but which yet 

 are particularly interesting because they are exactly similar 

 to certain ancient implements which are very common in 

 various parts of Europe, and have been already described 



* Ross, Baffin's Bay, p. 170. f I.e. p. 118. 



J Kane, Arctic Explorations, vol. ii., pp. 135, 210. 



