212 THE GREAT DENE RACE.

I had literally to lie down from time to time on the hard rocky ground; but I
cannot compare these difficulties with the unspeakable sufferings caused by
the strain on the muscles of the leg or hips which is known in the north as
the mal de raquettes.

But we are concerned with the Dénés, and should not mind the awkward
representatives of our own race who cannot get to appreciate without a painful
apprenticeship that pride of their winter travelling. For the northlander does
take pride in his snow-shoes; he makes them as neat as possible, and adorns
them with vermillion marks, which originally symbolized his familiar genius.
Thomas Simpson speaks of a boy scarcely two years old and still unweaned
who walked on snow-shoes. “I had the curiosity to measure them’, he says,

“and found their dimensions exactly two feet in length, in-
cluding the curved point, by six inches at the broadest part.
The little urchin was so fond of these painful appendages
that he hugged them as a plaything, and bawled lustily when
his mother attempted to take them from him”!

Of course, being used to that footgear from such a ten-
der age, the Déné does not feel it at all, and makes with it
wonderful progress. Yet it will be noticed that, were it only
for a change, he will take it of as soon as he reaches a hard,
well beaten track. Over fresh snow those shoes are especially
fatiguing. They not only sink deeper, but much of the side
Se, Snow falls on the forepart and soon covers it up, proving
{ at the same time a quite unwelcome weight to lift. In pre-
vision of this, the wayfarer always carries a staff, wherewith
he strikes the snow of from time to time.

Among the Carriers, the winter staff is provided near
its lower end with a little wheel of wood about five inches
in diameter which, being filled in with a coarse lacing of

Fig. 58. thongs resembling a spider web, renders to the hand of the

traveller over snow fields the same service as the snow-shoe
does to his feet, by preventing the stick from sinking too much (fig. 58). This
staff is a counterpart of that used in Norway, northeastern Asia and among
the western Eskimos. Yet, strangely enough, I do not remember having noticed
more than one mention of it in the whole range of my readings on the Dénés
of the great north. Fr. Petitot relates having once discovered tracks of its
discoid appendage on the snow*. Prof. O. T. Mason deems it, with every
appearance of reason, of recent Asiatic introduction in America®.

* Op. cit., p. 237.

* Autour du Grand Lac des Esclaves, p. 21.

* “Primitive Travel and Transportation”, p. 272. A similar staff is used in the basin of
the Amoor to assist the rider in mounting his reindeer (Bush, “Reindeer”, etc., p. 134.).