446 



The description is about the same for foreshafts of seal-darts 

 and for foreshafts of walrus harpoons ^) ; the latter are of course 

 the largest. The following description is appended to the 

 typical walrus harpoon: "In the tip of the foreshaft is a deep, 

 round socket to receive the loose shaft. The shaft and fore- 

 shaft are fastened together by a whipping of broad seal thong, 

 put on wet, one end passing through a hole in the foreshaft 

 one-quarter inch from the shaft, and kept from slipping by a 

 low transverse ridge on each side of the tang"^). In this passage 

 Murdoch, as we see, alludes to a hole in the foreshaft, like those 

 in foreshafts from North East Greenland, but with the difference 

 that it lies higher up than the wooden shaft and over the lash- 

 ing^), whereas in the Greenland foreshafts, it lies right down 

 on the thin end of the bevel, round which the lashing is 

 wrapped, and seems to have been used for riveting rather than 

 for catching the end of the lashing. 



Except for the peculiarities just alluded to in the three 

 foreshafts from North East Greenland, unilateral bevelling and 

 the hole pierced at the bottom of the tang, they bear the most 

 striking resemblance to the West Eskimo foreshafts, as these 

 have been described by American ethnographers'^). We find 

 in them a type which diverges widely from the small flat 

 square 'cap of bone no larger than the shaft, the tip of which 

 it protects' (Murdoch) of the eastern harpoons, which in Green- 

 land take the place of the foreshaft of the western Eskimo. 

 There is nothing to indicate that they correspond to an older 

 form of the harpoon in Greenland; it still remains a riddle 

 how they came to North East Greenland at all. 



Jw. Amd. 76 (Fig. 46), from Dunholm, is the bone head 



Murdoch figs. 204 and 223. 



Murdoch I, 224. 



Ibid. id. fig. 214. 



Murdoch's general definition of this implement is as follows: "a heavy 



bone or ivory foreshaft, usually of greater diameter than the shaft and 



somewhat club-shaped" (Murdoch I, 223). 



