In transportation facilities the Amerinds were extremely deficient, the Eskimo excelling all others in this direction. This was the result of environment and does not indicate superiority of the Eskimo over other stocks. They had vast treeless plains and ice sheets to traverse, and the sledge was a necessity. Dogs all Amerinds had, and some of them used them, to a certain extent, for beasts of burden, so that there was not a great deal of invention required to attach one or several to the sledge. On the other hand, most Amerinds were not so situated that they could utilise the dog in this way, and the continent offered them no substitute for it unless, as has been suspected, some of the South-western tribes may have had an animal resembling the vicuna, which they kept for its wool and presumably for transportation purposes also. But there is as yet no trustworthy evidence of this, and it may be said that the Amerinds of North America as a race possessed no beast of burden but the dog. In time, had the bison not been exterminated, and provided also that the whites had not come, it is possible that this animal might have been domesticated for milk, for meat, and for draught purposes. But the bison, after all, was ill adapted to work, for he is clumsy, so that the Amerind really had only the dog that was practicable, and this he utilised as far as possible, or at least as far as necessity directed. The Amerinds encountered on the plains of Texas in 1540 by Coronado were using the dog,[244] just as they afterward used the horse, for transporting tents and tent poles. A great many different forms of sledge are in use among the Eskimo, and besides the regular sledges, walrus skins, rolls of sealskins, and even packs of salmon are sometimes used for the purpose. When skins are used they are soaked with fresh water and sewed in a bag which is given the desired shape and then allowed to freeze solid, in which condition it remains till the return of warm weather. The Eskimo is never troubled with a “January thaw.” Sometimes sledges are made out of slabs of fresh-water ice frozen together; or blocks of ice are hollowed out. The runners of the ordinary sledge are usually made of driftwood and are from five to fifteen feet long and twenty inches to two and a half feet apart. The runners are connected by crossbars of wood or bone and are shod with whalebone, ivory, jawbone of whale, and sometimes with frozen fish. The shoe is either tied or riveted in place, and the parts are generally tied together, though now iron nails are sometimes used. When there is a back to the sledge it is made, in the Central regions, of wood or of deer or caribou antlers. Very small sleds are used for running boats out of water, and their runners are often single walrus tusks, the rest being of any wood obtainable. “The dog harness consists of a broad band or strap of stout rawhide, with three parallel loops at one end.... The head is passed through the middle loop, and a