no hole for admitting the water.  In cutting out the clothes, the women do it after one regular and uniform pattern, which probably descends unaltered from generation to generation.  The skin of the deer’s head is always made to form the apex of the hood, while that of the neck and shoulders comes down the back of the jacket; and so of every other part of the animal which is appropriated to its particular portion of the dress.  To soften the sealskins of which the boots, shoes, and mittens are made, the women chew them for an hour or two together and the young girls are often seen employed in thus preparing the materials for their mothers.  The covering of the canoes is a part of the women’s business, in which good workmanship is especially necessary to render the whole smooth and water-tight.  The skins, which are those of the neitiek only, are prepared by scraping off the hair and the fleshy parts with an ooloo, and stretching them out tight on a frame, in which state they are left over the lamps or in the sun for several days to dry; and after this they are well chewed by the women to make them fit for working.  The dressing of leather and of skins in the hair, is an art which the women have brought to no inconsiderable degree of perfection.  They perform this by first cleansing the skin from as much of the fat and fleshy matter as the ooloo will take off, and then rubbing it hard for several hours with a blunt scraper, called si=ak~o~ot, so as nearly to dry it.  It is then put into a vessel containing urine, and left to steep a couple of days, after which a drying completes the process.  Skins dressed in the hair are, however, not always thus steeped; the women, instead of this, chewing them for hours together till they are quite soft and clean.  Some of the leather thus dressed looked nearly as well as ours, and the hair was as firmly fixed to the pelt; but there was in this respect a very great difference, according to the art or attention of the housewife.  Dyeing is an art wholly unknown to them.  The women are very expert at platting, which is usually done with three threads of sinew; if greater strength is required, several of these are twisted slackly together, as in the bowstrings.  The quickness with which some of the women plat is really surprising; and it is well that they do so, for the quantity required for the bows alone would otherwise occupy half the year in completing it.

It may be supposed that, among so cheerful a people as the Esquimaux, there are many games or sports practised; indeed, it was rarely that we visited their habitations without seeing some engaged in them.  One of these our gentlemen saw at Winter Island, on an occasion when most of the men were absent from the huts on a sealing excursion, and in this Iligliuk was the chief performer.  Being requested to amuse them in this way, she suddenly unbound her hair, platted it, tied both ends together to keep it out of her