T II E IK EQUIP MEN T. 
205 
give us their company for the full time of a visit, 
brought up from behind the land-ice as many as fifty- 
six fine dogs, with their sledges, and secured them 
within two hundred feet of the brig, driving their 
lances into the ice, and picketing the dogs to them by 
the seal-skin traces. The animals understood the 
operation perfectly, and lay down as soon as it com¬ 
menced. The sledges were made up of small frag- 
NATIVE SLEDGE, (KOOMETIK,) — CELLULAR DONE OF WHALE. 
ments of porous bone, admirably knit together by 
thongs of hide; the runners, which glistened like bur¬ 
nished steel, were of highly-polished ivory, obtained 
from the tusks of the walrus. 
The only arms they carried were knives, concealed 
in their boots; but their lances, which were lashed to 
the sledges, were quite a formidable weapon. The 
staff was of the horn of the narwhal, or else of the 
thigh-bones of the bear, two lashed together, or some¬ 
times the mirabilis of the walrus, three or four of them 
