all but the placing of the rails or gunwales, which are the two remaining thirty-six feet sticks. These being fastened with thongs to the ribs, and to the stem and stern posts, your skeleton is finished, and it is exceedingly light, strong, and elastic. But now, instead of covering this novel sort of boat-skeleton with planking, you stretch over it a coat of seal-hide (it can scarcely be called leather). It has been, however, tanned and dried, and afterwards thoroughly saturated with oil, until it is as impervious to water as a plate of iron. A number of skins are necessarily required, and these the women will sew together for you so firmly with sinew thread that not a drop of water can find its way through the seams. This skin coat, being cut and fashioned to fit the skeleton as neatly as a slipper to the foot, is drawn on and firmly tied. It is very soft when you draw it on, but when it dries it is as tight and hard as a drum-head; and when the skin becomes a little old, the light will come through it as through parchment. When afloat in the oomiak, you can always discover how much water you are drawing by looking through the side of it. This is not a pleasant operation, however, for a novice or a nervous person, since one can hardly resist the impression that he is in a very treacherous sort of craft. This light and elastic boat is propelled with short oars having broad blades, which are tied to the gunwale, instead of being thrust out through rowlocks. These oars are shod with bone, to protect them from the ice. A single mast is erected in the bow, upon which is run up a square sail when the wind is fair. If the owner of the boat is rich enough, he gets the material for his sail from the governor; but if not, he makes it out of seal-skins. I have observed that he gets the wood from the governor’s stores: not all of it, however, for the obliging sea brings him an occasional tree that has floated with the ocean current from the forests of Siberia; or a plank, perhaps, that has fallen overboard from a passing vessel; or a spar or other portion of a wreck. Thus, before the Danes came here, did the Esquimaux obtain all the wood they used. From this source they also procured their iron, in the shape of spikes, nails, bands, and bars, attached to these waifs of the sea. Thus do the ocean currents, which carry heat and cold to the uttermost parts of the earth, scatter also blessings to mankind.