194 ESKIMO IMPLEMENTS OF THE CHASE. 



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to capture these and other seals — specimens of them are in the National 

 Museum at Washington — you would be astonished at their roughness. 

 It is very difficult, especially for the northern bands, to get any wood 

 excepting sticks that are washed ashore, and a piece long enough to make 

 a good spear-handle is extremely rare. In most cases, therefore, they are 

 obliged to splice two or three short pieces together, and this they can only 

 do by slanting both ends, and binding the pieces at their juncture with 

 strings of raw-hide or strips of intestine. The striking end of the spear, 

 usually consists of a long and pretty straight piece of bone, such as can 

 be got from a whale's or walrus's skeleton, and this is tipped with a sharp 

 point of bone or flint, or (nowadays generally) of iron. Sometimes this 

 tip is movable, so that when it penetrates the flesh it will slip off the 

 staff and be held only by the line, while the handle floats, secured to 

 the line by a loop. 



Other spears have a skin buoy attached, this making it more difficult 

 for the poor animal to swim away, and also helping to float the weapon 

 if the hunter misses his aim. The stout lines are made of seal-hide, or 

 sometimes of braided spruce-roots. The "hooks" mentioned above have 

 wooden or bone shafts, to the end of which a curved and sharpened hook 

 of bone is firmly bound. Besides these, other rough weapons, and a kind 

 of net, are used in the capture of these wary animals, in all of which the 

 seal's hide and bones contribute to his tribe's destruction, and which are 

 marvels of savage ingenuity. 



Many of them are used later when the ice breaks up and the Eski- 

 mos can go out on the ugliest of voyages in their kayaks, the crankiest 

 of primitive craft ; but this is an adventure they never shirk, and one 

 that their acquaintance with Europeans has not changed at all. The 

 kayak is eighteen or twenty feet long, but is so light that it can be car- 

 ried by the one man who forms the crew. It is all decked over, except- 

 ing a little round hole through which the young Eskimo squeezes his 

 legs and sits down. Then he puts on a tight oil-skin coat over his gar- 

 ments, and ties it down to the deck all around him, so that no water can 

 pour in " 'tween decks." But, on the other hand, he must untie the 

 knots before he can get out ; so, if by chance he capsizes, he must either 

 be content to navigate head down and keel up, or else must right him- 

 self by a sort of somersault, which shall bring him up on the opposite 

 side — and this he often actually does. 



When the kayaker catches sight of a seal he advances within about 

 twenty-five feet of it, and hurls his harpoon "by means of a piece of 

 wood adapted to support the harpoon while he takes aim," called a throw- 



