upon their shoulders, and yet so roomy that thirty men
can be conveyed in it. One seldom sees _anatkuat_, or boats intended
for only one man; they are much worse built and uglier than the
Greenlander's _kayak_. The large boats are rowed with broad-bladed
oars, of which every man or woman manages only one. By means of
these oars a sufficient number of rowers can for a little raise the
speed of the boat to ten kilometres per hour. Like the Greenlanders,
however, they often cease rowing in order to rest, laugh, and
chatter, then row furiously for some minutes rest themselves again,
row rapidly, and so on. When the sea is covered with thin newly
formed ice they put two men in the fore of the boat with one leg
over in order to trample the ice in pieces.

During winter the boats are laid up, and instead the dog-sledges are
put in order. These are of a different construction from the
Greenland sledges, commonly very light and narrow, made of some
flexible kind of wood, and shod with plates of whales' jawbones,
whales' ribs, or whalebone. In order to improve the running, the
runners before the start are carefully covered with a layer of ice
from two or three millimetres in thickness by repeatedly pouring
water over them.[281] The different parts of the sledge are not
fastened together by nails, but are bound together by strips of skin
or strings of whalebone. On the low uncomfortable seat there
commonly lies a piece of skin, generally of the Polar bear. The
number of dogs that are harnessed to each sledge is variable. I have
seen a Chukch riding behind two small lean dogs, who however
appeared to draw their heavy load over even hard snow without any
extraordinary exertion. At other sledges I have seen ten or twelve
dogs, and a sledge laden with goods was drawn by a team of
twenty-eight. The dogs are generally harnessed one pair before
another to a long line common to all,[282] sometimes in the case of
short excursions more than two abreast, or so irregularly that their
position in relation to the sledge appears to have depended merely
on the accidental length of the draught-line and the caprice of the
driver. The dogs are guided not by reins but by continual crying and
shouting, accompanied by lashes from a long whip. There is, besides,
in every properly equipped sledge a short and thick staff mounted
with iron, with a number of iron rings attached to the upper end.
When nothing else will do, this staff is thrown at the offend