es in
general prefer. It was said that these people steamed or boiled wood, in
order to bend it for fashioning the timbers of their canoes. As
fishermen or seamen, they can put on a woolding or seizing with
sufficient strength and security, and are acquainted with some of the
most simple and serviceable knots in use among us. In all the arts,
however, practised by the men, it is observable that the ingenuity lies
in the principle, not in the execution. The experience of ages has led
them to adopt the most efficacious methods, but their practice as
handicrafts has gone no farther than absolute necessity requires; they
bestow little labour upon neatness or ornament.

In some of the few arts practised by the women there is much more
dexterity displayed, particularly in that important branch of a
housewife's business, sewing, which, even with their own clumsy needles
of bone, they perform with extraordinary neatness. They had, however,
several steel needles of a three-cornered shape, which they kept in a
very convenient case, consisting of a strip of leather passed through a
hollow bone, and having its ends remaining out, so that the needles
which are stuck into it may be drawn in and out at pleasure. These cases
were sometimes ornamented by cutting; and several thimbles of leather,
one of which, in sewing, is worn on the first finger, are usually
attached to it, together with a bunch of narrow spoons and other small
articles liable to be lost. The thread they use is the sinew of the
reindeer (_tooktoo =ew=all~o~o_), or, when they cannot procure
this, the swallow-pipe of the _neiliek_. This may be split into threads
of different sizes, according to the nature of their work, and is
certainly a most admirable material. This, together with any other
articles of a similar kind, they keep in little bags, which are
sometimes made of the skin of birds' feet, disposed with the claws
downward in a very neat and tasteful manner. In sewing, the point of the
needle is entered and drawn through in a direction towards the body, and
not from it or towards one side, as with our seamstresses. They sew the
deerskins with a "round seam," and the water-tight boots and shoes are
"stitched." The latter is performed in a very adroit and efficacious
manner, by putting the needle only half through the substance of one
part of the sealskin, so as to leave no hole for admitting the water. In
cutting out the clothes, the women do it after one regular