394 



gués to confirm the picture we have formed, viz. a broad heavy 

 sledge, one meter or more in length, the two runners of which 

 are quite straight along their upper edge, not curving up in 

 front like those of the West Greenland sledges ; with irregularly 

 cut cross-pieces, which have at either end two holes through 

 which have passed the straps with which they have been fastened 

 to the runners through large, often rectangular holes; with a 

 keel of flat pieces of bone or ivory, which are nailed to the 

 under surface of the runners by means of wooden pegs. Whether 

 it had uprights or not, is not quite clear. It is true that a 

 pair of uprights have been fathered on the sledge of the Ger- 

 man Expedition, but it is by no means certain that the function 

 of the comparatively narrow wooden sticks which were found 

 lying together with the other parts, has been rightly under- 

 stood^). 



We find a quite similar sledge among the central Eskimo 

 in King William Land, from which Amundsen brought three 

 large sledges, two of which are now in the Ethnographical 

 Museum at Christiania, and the third in the Ethnographical 

 Museum at Bergen (Appendix fig. 90); these three are entirely 

 without uprights. 



In contradistinction to the above, the sledges of the Smith 

 Sund Eskimo (at Cape York) have uprights resembling those of 

 the central West Greenlanders (in Umanak fjord and Disko Bay). 

 The sub-arctic Eskimo in West Greenland between Holstensborg 

 and Cape Farvel, as we know, do not make use of sledges. At 

 Ammassalik, in the central part of the East coast, the sledges 

 are comparatively small and narrow and the uprights are of a 

 peculiar type (Appendix fig. 89), being several times broader at 

 the foot than above, their upper parts being rounded and having 

 an indentation as a rest for the hands in steering them down 



') In any case there are reason for supposing that the uprights, if they 

 existed, were fastened to the inner side or on the upper surface of the 

 runners, not to the outer side. 



