The oars for the Umiak are clumsy things compared to the kyak paddle. The blades are rough oblongs of wood, almost like spades, fitted to poles of wood by no means necessarily straight, and bound on by thongs of hide. Sometimes the oar is quite a crooked branch, and a collection of these in the hide hung boat looks about as prehistoric an outfit as Mr. E. T. Reed’s most comic imagination might depict among his inimitable parodies of life in the neolithic period. The Kyak and the Umiak are the two purely native types of boat used on the Arctic coast. The people, however, are familiar and handy enough nowadays with rowing and sailing boats of European model, wherever they have had the opportunity of using and knowing them. They have other ingenious means of getting about on the water when boats of any description are not to be had at all. The hunter at the edge of the floe can stand and paddle himself away out to sea on a raft or slab of ice detached from the mass; and the deerstalker inland, anxious to cross a sheet of water or a river, will utilise a skin stuffed with dried heather, stoutly bound about with thongs of hide. He sits on this and skims off as happily as a water-beetle. The possession of a couple of boats like the foregoing, of a good store of hunting weapons, plenty of skins, a team of well-trained dogs, and two sleds—one, a short, light, travelling affair for hunting, and the other a heavy, long-distance thing for the migrations of the family—constitute the Eskimo house-holder’s wealth, and determine his social precedence and standing in the tribe. CHAPTER IX ESKIMO DOGS The value to the Eskimo of a good team of about five dogs is equivalent to that of a kyak or a sled, or a reliable gun. To assess it in terms of money would have no significance in a land where utility and necessity alone determine the scale. The breed is part, or half, wolf. In build, the true Eskimo dog is well formed, almost slim about the hindquarters compared with the rest of his body, the broad and sturdy chest, the strong neck and heavy jaws. His hair is very thick, grey or tawny in colour, and his tail immensely bushy, always carried erectly, curving over the back. He is a different creature to the Samoyede and the Kentucky wolf hound; but probably there is very little to distinguish him from the famous Alaskan “husky” dog of so much literary fame, and the dog of the Labrador.