XII.] 
TANNING REINDEER SKINS. 
123 
sufficiently worked, she fills a vessel with her own urine, mixes 
this with comminuted willow bark, which has been dried over 
the lamp, and rubs the blood-warm liquid into the reindeer 
skin. In order to give this a red colour on one side, the bark 
of a species of Finns (?) is mixed with the tanning liquid. The 
skins are made very soft by this process, and on the inner side 
ICE MATTOCKS. 
One-ninth of the natural size. 
almost resemble chamois leather. Sometimes too the reindeer 
skin is tanned to real chamois of very excellent quality. 
Two sorts of ice mctUochs; the shaft is of wood, the blade of 
the spade-formed one of whalebone, of the others of a walrus 
tusk; it is fixed to the'"shaft by skin thongs with great skill. 
