Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 395 



through which the ends of the running line are drawn. In these 

 ends the two other (flask-shaped) bone eyelets are fixed; the end is 

 stuck into the basal socket of the eyelet and fixed by a bone nail. 



The smaller eyelets in figs. 95 / — i (qoorutaait), each with two 

 transverse holes, belong to the cross-straps which lie in pairs 

 over the kaiak deck (the cross-straps Nos. 4 to 9). Each pair 

 of straps is drawn through two (or four) similar eyelets, each of 

 which (or each pair) has its place on its own side of the middle line 

 of the kaiak deck, where they can be moved to any side desired. 

 These eyelets serve on the one hand, to lift the straps slightly above 

 the deck skin, and thus to keep these dry so that the weapons or 

 whatever it may be can be more easily fixed under them, on the 

 other hand, by moving them a little, to tighten the straps where 

 anything has been pushed under them. Fig. 95 h is broad and has 

 the form of a seal, flat below and convex above (the figure shows 

 it from above) ; d and g also have broad bases, whereas f and i 

 are thinner (in the shape of spectacles). These eyelets are all from 

 the "dead house". The eyelets for the cross-straps on the modern 

 Ammassalik kaiaks are formed after the South Greenland type, 

 especially the double-eyed, which are now made flat and broad, 

 without any trace of the characteristic seal-shape. 



Fig. 96 shows the front and back of a kind of eyelet or attach- 

 ment, of which three pieces were found in the "dead house" (Amdrup 

 coll. Nos. 298 — 300). In the narrow base is the opening of the same 

 hole, which is seen in the broad side of b (lowermost of the two 

 holes), thus a vertical canal. A little higher is a transverse hole, 

 the rim of which on the other side is formed into a bed for a knot 

 (countersinking). The notch seen low down in the one corner is 

 common, like these holes, to all three pieces. It has probably been 

 some sort of upright peg at the side of the deck, to prevent the 

 harpoon and harpoon-line from slipping off", placed on the right side 

 of the man-hole and sloping a little in towards it [a the inner side, 

 b the outer side). Their form is now out of date. They have 

 perhaps been a special East Greenland form of the well-known "at- 

 tachment of right-hand side of man-hole of kaj^ak" ^) of the Smith 

 Sound and Central Eskimo. Instead of this the Ammassalikers now 

 use a small, cylindrical or semicylindrical bone block with a groove 

 on the top (atciijukulaa), almost at the same place on the kaiak, 

 according to Johan Petersen, in imitation of the kaiak of the South 

 Greenlanders. He knew, that they had earlier had a fairly long 



1) Boas (1901) p. 12, fig. 3 and (1907) fig. 224 (from Southampton Island); probabh^ 

 misnamed "hand-support of harpoon-shaft" by Kroeber (1899), p. 281, fig. 17. 



