barbed head in the wound, and the deer would go off, "sleep one night, and then die."
Geese, gulls, and other large fowls were shot with arrows that had long, five-sided heads of walrus ivory, not very sharp and barbed on one edge, while for hunting small birds they used an arrow with a blunt, club-shaped head made of reindeer antler. Such an arrow kills a small bird or little animal like a lemming or ground squirrel by stunning it, and does not tear a great hole in it. The boys' arrows nowadays are often headed with empty copper cartridge cases, and I have seen one of these shot clean through the body of a small bird.
The bow was carried, strung ready for use, in a sheath of tanned sealskin slung across the shoulders in such a way that it could easily be drawn out under the right arm. Nowadays they carry their rifles in similar sheaths.
Attached to the sheath was a quiver, also of sealskin, in which they used to keep an assortment of arrows, some of each kind, according to the hunter's needs.
All the Eskimos draw the bow like European archers that is, by hooking the fore and middle fingers round the bowstring, with the arrow clasped between the fingers, instead of pinching the butt of the arrow between the finger and thumb, like most Indians.
As the bow is now practically nothing but a plaything among the Eskimos of the Northwest, it will probably not be many years before it entirely disappears, as it has in Greenland.
