408 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

Snow-Shoes.

But, of course, in the winter time, the great and really indispensable
adjunct to northern travelling is the snow-shoe. Its use among so many tribes
possessed of their own idiosyncrasies cannot fail to result in many different
Styles, all of which it would be hardly profitable to describe in full, as several
vary only in minor details. With regard to form and in order of elaborateness
all the Déné snow-shoes can probably be reduced to seven styles, namely,
the round snow-shoe, the flat snow-shoe, the curved roundfronted snow-shoe,
the Loucheux snow-shoe, the Rocky Mountain snow-shoe, the Chippewayan
snow-shoe, and the pointed or Hudson Bay snow-shoe.

The first named is oblong in shape, and without any tail or front end.
Its general outlines are responsible for the name S’aes-khé, bear-foot, by which
it is known among the Carriers.
It is in the west proper to child-
ren too small to use the regular
snow-shoe. Such of the women
as are in poor circumstances,
widows and others, or any one
who may be surprised by an un-
expected fall of snow will also
occasionally be seen with these
primitive winter commodities.
As appears from the accom-
panying fig. 54, a single stick
with ends rudely lashed to-
gether, over which a cross-bar is resting in the rear part of the implement, suf-
fices to form the frame and the netting is of the coarsest and uniform in size.

The flat snow-shoe
(fig. 55) is an old style,
now obsolete in the
west, though still worn
in cases of emergency.
Like the preceding, its
frame is made of only
one piece from tail to
tail; but it is provided
with three cross-sticks

Fig. 55. and filled in with two

kinds of netting, coarse

in the middle and finer at both ends. The former is of moose raw-hide line,

the latter of cariboo skin cut thin and even, and called babiche in the north.
Length, three to four feet.