OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



507 



snow-drift from covering, and the dogs from eating them. The difficulty 

 of procuring a canoe may be concluded from the circumstance of there 

 being at Winter Island twenty men able to manage one, and only seven 

 canoes among them. Of these indeed only three or four were in good 

 repair ; the rest being wholly or in part stripped of the skin, of which ft 

 good deal was occasionally cut off during the winter, to make boots, shoes, 

 and mittens for our people. We found no oomiak, or women's boat, among 

 them, and understood that they were not in the habit of using them, 

 which may in part be accounted for by their passing so much of the summer 

 in the interior ; they knew very well however what they were, and made 

 some clumsy models of them for our people. 



In the weapons used for killing their game there is considerable variety, 

 according to the animal of which they are in pursuit. The most simple 

 of these is the oomJc, which they use only for killing the small seal. It 

 consists of a light staff of wood, four feet in length, having at one end 

 the point of a narwhal's horn, from ten to eighteen inches long, firmly 

 secured by rivets and wooldings : at the other end, is a smaller and less 

 effective point of the same kind. To prevent losing the ivory part, in case 

 of the wood breaking, a stout thong runs along the whole length of the 

 wood, each end passing through a hole in the ivory, and the bight secured 

 in several places to the staff. In this weapon, as far as it has yet been 

 described, there is little art or ingenuity displayed ; but a considerable degree 

 of both in an appendage called sidtkd (13), consisting of a piece of bone 

 three inches long, and having a point of iron at one end, and at the other 

 end a small hole or socket to receive the point of the oonak. Through the 

 middle of this instrument is secured the allele, or line of thong, of which 

 every man has, when sealing, a couple of coils, each from four to six fathoms 

 long, hanging at his back. These are made of the skin of the ognke as in 

 Greenland *, and are admirably adapted to the purpose, both on account of 

 their strength, and the property which they possess of preserving their plia- 

 bility even in the most intense frost. 



When a seal is seen, the siatko is taken from a little leathern case in 

 which, when out of use, it is carefully enclosed, and attached by its socket 

 to the point of the spear (18) ; in this situation it is retained by bring- 

 ing the allek tight down and fastening it round the middle of the staff by 

 what seamen call a " slippery hitch," which may instantly be disengaged 



* Crantz, I., 125. 



3 T 2 



