OF A NORTH-WEST PASSAGE. 



511 



is a knob of bone, or sometimes of wood covered with leather, with a deep 

 notch for the reception of the string. The only wood which they can procure, 

 not possessing sufficient elasticity combined with strength, they ingeniously 

 remedy the defect by securing to the back of the bow, and to the knobs at 

 each end, a quantity of small lines, each composed of a plat or " sinnet" of 

 three sinews. The number of lines thus reaching from end to end is gene- 

 rally about thirty; but besides these, several others are fastened with hitches 

 round the bow, in pairs, commencing eight inches from one end, and again 

 united at the same distance from the other, making the whole number of 

 strings in the middle of the bow sometimes amount to sixty. These being 

 put on with the bow somewhat bent the contrary way, produce a spring so 

 strong as to require considerable force as well as knack in stringing it, and 

 giving the requisite velocity to the arrow. The bow is completed by a 

 woolding round the middle and a wedge or two, here and there, driven in 

 to tighten it. A bow in one piece is however very rare ; they generally 

 consist of from two to five pieces of bone of unequal lengths, secured toge- 

 ther by rivets and tree-nails (22). 



The arrows vary in length from twenty to thirty inches, according to the 

 materials that can be commanded. About two-thirds of the whole length is 

 of fir rounded, and the rest of bone let by a socket into the wood, and 

 having a head of thin iron, or more commonly of slate, secured into a slit by 

 two tree-nails. Towards the opposite end of the arrow are two feathers, 

 generally of the spotted oval, not very neatly lashed on*. The bow-string 

 consists of from twelve to eighteen small lines of three-sinew sinnet, having 

 a loose twist, and with a separate becket of the same size for going over the 

 knobs at the end of the bow. 



We tried their skill in archery by getting them to shoot at a mark for a 

 prize, though with bows in extremely bad order on account of the frost and 

 their hands very cold. The mark was two of their spears stuck upright in 

 the snow, their breadth being three inches and a half. At twenty yards 

 they struck this every time ; at thirty sent the arrows always within an inch 

 or two of it ; and at forty or forty-five yards, I should think, would generally 

 hit a fawn if the animal stood still. These weapons are perhaps sufficient 

 to inflict a mortal wound at something more than that distance, for which, 



*An arrow-head of a more complicated form, but of which we did not discover the par- 

 ticular use, is figured in the engraving (15). 



