martingale immediately slips; the latter unrolls and drags the shaft through the water at right angles to the line. The shaft, besides acting as a drag on the seal’s motions, also serves as a float to indicate his position to the hunter, as its buoyancy brings it to the surface before the seal when the latter rises for air. The shaft is usually painted red except so much of the end as lies in the groove of the throwing-board, in the act of darting. These darts vary but little in size and material, and are all of essentially the same pattern. They are always about 5 feet in length when mounted for use. (The longest is 64⅓ inches, and the shortest 57.) The head, as well as the foreshaft, is sometimes made of walrus ivory, and the latter sometimes of whale’s bone. The chief variation is in the length of the martingale, and the details of the method of attaching it. No two are precisely alike. The foreshaft is generally plain, but is occasionally highly ornamented, as is shown in Fig. 204, No. 56516 [105]. The figures are all incised and colored, some with ocher and some with soot. [Illustration: FIG. 204.--Foreshaft of seal dart. 1/2] Both of the kinds of darts above described are thrown by means of a hand board or throwing-board. This is a flat, narrow board, from 15 to 18 inches long, with a handle at one end and a groove along the upper surface in which the spear lies with the butt resting against a catch at the other end. The dart is propelled by a quick motion of the wrist, as in casting with a fly-rod, which swings up the tip of the board and launches the dart forward. This contrivance, which practically makes of the hand a lever 18 inches long, enables the thrower by a slight motion of the wrist to impart great velocity to the dart. The use of this implement is universal among the Eskimo, though not peculiar to them. The Greenlanders, however, not only use it for the two kinds of darts already mentioned, but have adapted it to the large harpoon.[N323] This is undoubtedly to adapt the large harpoon for use from the kaiak, which the Greenlanders use more habitually than most other Eskimo. On the other hand, the people of Baffin Land and the adjoining regions, as well as the inhabitants of northeastern Siberia, use it only with the bird dart.[N324] Throughout western North America the throwing-board is used essentially as at Point Barrow. Prof. O. T. Mason has given[N325] an interesting account of the different forms of throwing-board used by the Eskimo and Aleuts of North America. [Illustration: FIG. 205.--Throwing board for darts. 1/4 1/4] [Footnote N323: Crantz, vol. 1, p. 146, Pl. V, Figs. 1 and 2, and Rink as quoted above, also Kane, First Exp., p. 478.] [Footnote N324: Parry, Second Voyage, p. 508 (Iglulik); and Nordenskiöld, Vega, vol. 2, p. 105, Fig. 5.] [Footnote N325: Smithsonian Report for 1884, part II, pp. 279-289.]