Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 459 



is the thong connecting the peg witli the bladder. In b the hole tor 

 the same thong is seen at the base of the head. Tlie last is com- 

 paratively longer than in the smaller peg. 



At Smith Sound and outside Greenland, in addition to bladder 

 floats, the use is known of a wooden float or drag, consisting of 

 a flat, square board, which is connected by a short thong with the 

 float. It is mentioned from Smith Sound and Baffin Land^). It is 

 perhaps a specialisation of a part of the kaiak stand described from 

 South-West Alaska, which is thrown out in the same way as the 

 sealing float (mentioned pp. 389-390) and recalls the method known 

 from the same coast of using the harpoon, the wooden shaft floating 

 on the water and thus acting as a drag while connected by the har- 

 poon line with the loose toggle head sticking in the animal. This 

 method is probably part of an old tradition, as O. Fabricius men- 

 tions for West Greenland, that "some daring hunters do not use 

 bladders, but in their stead bind the harpoon line round the kaiak 

 stand alone, which they throw into the water after the seal." 



The wound-plugs (naaterseet p. 50) are used partly to stop the 

 blood flowing from the wound of the animal, partly to enclose the 

 air, w^hen the seal is being blown up to float on the water behind 

 the kaiak. According to the nature of the wound there are different 

 kinds of wound-plugs, of wood or of bone, larger or smaller, carried 

 by the hunter on his kaiak or on his wanderings out on the winter ice. 



The larger wound-plugs (figs. 158, 160, 168) are made of wood 

 in different shapes, usually flat and broad above with two or three 

 grooves running round the uppermost part, narrowing below and 

 pointed at the lower end. They are used for stopping the wounds 

 made by the larger weapon points, especially the ordinary harpoon 

 heads. 



The small wound-plugs (figs. 157, 159, 169) are made of bone 

 (bone of bear especially), 7 to 10cm. in length; in form they re- 

 semble needles or bodkins, but are flatter, elliptical in section or 

 flattened with a median midrib along the lower part of the lateral 

 surfaces; they are characterized especially by the flat head at the 

 top, produced by two notches or indentations in both edges near 

 the upper end, and by the lanceolate form of the lower part^). 



^) Boas (1888) p. 492, fig. 426. Turner (18Я4) p. 250, fig. 69. 



-') Kroeber (1899) p. 282, fig. 18; Boas (1901) p. 22. 



^) In my description of the Amdrup collection from the northern districts 1 have 

 mentioned what is probably a wound-plug as a bodkin (inv. Amdrup 31 in 

 "Meddelelser om Grønland" XXVIII, p. 396, cf. fig. 19), but as it is almost of the 

 same type as one of the wound-plugs here fig. 169 b it must undoubtedly be 

 referred to this categorз^ 



