Note 299 — Chapter II · HUNTERS AND FISHERS.

In industry they display much skill. Their boats are ingeniously made and have excited the admiration of all travellers. “The kajak (qajaq) is almost exclusively used for hunting by all Eskimo tribes from Greenland to Alaska”299. Crantz tells us that the implements the Greenlanders use for procuring their subsistence are simple, but so well adapted to their purpose that they are more convenient than the costly implements of the Europeans. Their harpoons consist of several pieces, but are so ingeniously made that not a single piece is superfluous. Their boats are also greatly admired by this writer300. And Bancroft tells us that “the Hyperboreans surpass all American nations in their facilities for locomotion, both upon land and water. In their skin boats, the natives of the Alaskan seaboard, from Point Barrow to Mount St. Elias, made long voyages, crossing the strait and sea of Bering, and held commercial intercourse with the people of Asia. Sixty miles is an ordinary day’s journey for sledges, while Indians on snow-shoes have been known to run down and capture deer”. “So highly were these boats esteemed by the Russians, that they were at once universally adopted by them in navigating these waters. They were unable to invent any improvement in either of them”301.