[469]. Rep. Point Barrow Exp., p. 27.
[470]. Schwatka, in “Nimrod in the North,” (p. 159) describes a practice among the “Netschillik,” of King William’s Land, which appears very much like this, though his description is somewhat obscure in details. It is as follows: “We found the runners shod with pure ice. Trenches the length of the sledge are dug in the ice, and into these the runners are lowered some two or three inches, yet not touching the bottom of the trench by fully the same distance. Water is then poured in and allowed to freeze, and when the sledge is lifted out it is shod with shoes of perfectly pure and transparent ice.” Strangely enough, these curious ice shoes are not mentioned by Schwatka’s companions, Gilder and Klutschak, nor by Schwatka himself in his paper on the “Netschillik” in Science, although Klutschak describes and figures a sledge made wholly of ice among the Netsillingmiut. (“Als Eskimo, etc.” p. 76). Also referred to by Boas (“Central Eskimo,” p. 533).
[471]. The word used was “kau-kau.” Perhaps it referred to a seal for food, as the sledge appears very like one described by Hooper (Corwin Report, p. 105) as used on the “Arctic Coast.” “When sealing on solid ice a small sled is sometimes used, the runners of which are made of walrus tusks. It is perhaps 16 inches long by 14 inches wide and 3 inches high. It is used in dragging the carcass of the seal over the ice.”
We, however, never saw such sleds used for dragging seals. This one may have been imported from farther south. See also, Beechey, Voyage, etc., p. 251, where he speaks of seeing at Kotzebue Sound, a drawing on ivory of “a seal dragged home on a small sledge.”
[472]. See Dall’s figure, Alaska, p. 165.
[473]. Vega, vol. 1, p. 498.
[474]. Compare also the various illustrations in Hooper’s “Tents of the Tuski.”·
[475]. I failed to get the translation of this word, but it seems to be connected with the Greenlandic mâlavok, he howls (a dog—).
[476]. Contributions, p. 51.
[477]. Compare Dall, Alaska, p. 25.