188 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

The material of the purely aboriginal nets was the fibres of the willow
(Salix longifolia), the alder (Alnus rubra), or the nettle (Urtica Lyallii). The
inner bark of the two first mentioned shrubs is the part that yields the fila-
ments entering into the composition of fish-net twine. Willow bark was in
general use; and I have heard of alder as being made to serve a like pur-
pose nowhere else than in Alaska. The thread-like fibres were twisted or
plaited by the women on their naked thigh to the size of common Holland
twine, and when prepared in winter the resulting twine was stronger than its
modern substitute. The young woman whom Hearne found, in 1776, leading
such a lonely life in the northern wastes! had by herself several hundred fathoms
of that material, wherewith she intended to make a net as soon as spring
was sufficiently advanced to use it.

In addition to the shreds of the nettle, the use of which seems to have
been confined to some western tribes, a species of wild hemp (probably Apo-
cynum cannabinum) was sometimes put to the same use in the west. In the
far east, Hearne’s “Northern Indians” made their fish-nets of babiche, or fine
thongs of raw deer skin. But, as the old trader aptly remarks, after they had
been soaked in water for some time, their material grew so soft and slippery
that when large fish struck the net, the hitches were quite liable to slip and
let it escape.

As to the Hupas, they made their nets from the leaves of /ris macro-
siphon, each of which yielded but two fibres, which were extracted by draw-
ing the leaves past the thumb, protected by an artificial nail made of
a mussel shell. In this connection, it would certainly sound strange to a nor-
thern Déné to be told that his southern congeners leave it to the men to
make the fish-nets. None but women would ever dream of attempting such
a task in the north.

Even salmon is captured by means of nets among the Hupas. These
nets are some sixty feet long by three and a half wide. The northwestern
Dénés measure the width of their nets by the number of their meshes. Large-
meshed nets have seventeen meshes from side to side, while such as are
intended for smaller fish count something like twenty across. All kinds of
drag-nets are at least a hundred feet long with the same aborigines. In the
Mackenzie they are from three to forty fathoms in length, and from thirteen
to thirty-six inches in depth. The short ones are set in the eddy currents of
the rivers, and the long ones in the lakes”.

Of course, all those nets are provided with wooden floats to buoy up
their upper edge, and sinkers, mere pebbles or stones in the north, but discs
three and a-half inches in diameter, with holes chipped in the centre, among
the Pacific division of the family.

" See our Chapter VIII.
> Cf. A. Mackenzie’s Journal, vol. I, p. 237.