[449]. See Egedo, Greenland, p. 111.
[450]. These passages being, as far as I know, the earliest description of the umiak and kaiak are worth quotation: “Their boats are made all of Seale skins, with a keel of wood within the skinne; the proportion of them is like a Spanish shallop, saue only they be flat in the bottome, and sharp at both endes” (p. 621, 1576). Again: “They haue two sorts of boats made of leather, set out on the inner side with quarters of wood, artificially tyed with thongs of the same; the greater sort are not much unlike our wherries, wherein sixteene or twenty men may sitte; they have for a sayle, drest the guttes of such beasts as they kill, very fine and thinne, which they sewe together; the other boate is but for one man to sitte and rowe in, with one oare” (p. 628, 1577).
[451]. Compare for instance Kane’s figure 1st Grinnell Exp. p. 422, and Lyon, Journal, p. 30.
[452]. See Beechey Voyage, p. 252. In describing the umiaks at Hotham Inlet he says: “The model differs from that of the umiak of the Hudson Bay in being sharp at both ends.” Smyth gives a good figure of the Hotham Inlet craft in the plate opposite p. 250.
[453]. Greenland, p. 111.
[454]. Vol. 1, p. 148.
[455]. Contributions, p. 43. Boas, however, says three to five skins. (Central Eskimo, p. 528.)
[456]. 2d Voy., p. 507.
[457]. Alaska, p. 15.
[458]. Twisted sinew is sometimes used. A pair of snowshoes from Point Barrow, owned by the writer, are netted with this material.