TRAVEL AND TRANSPORTATION. 213

one The Carrier makes it serve a novel purpose, which I have tried to illustrate
in fig. 59. The hand of the hunter, warm and trembling from the excitement

of the chase, if passed trough the leather loop which often accompanies the
upper part of the staff, can thereby be steadied and find a reliable support
for the barrel of his gun while in the act of firing.

Ancient Sledges.

Winter travelling with one’s family implies sleighing. Moreover, in the
manufacture of the primitive vehicle used in this connection, we have again
a patent manifestation of the assimilative disposition of the Dénés. Before
we prove this, 1 must be allowed a remark which may have its usefulness,
were it only to correct a mistaken notion of a few modern sociologists
concerning the respective rdles of the sexes in primitive society.

How many readers, or even professional ethnologists, are aware of the
fact that, until little more than a century ago, the northerners had no dog-

Fig. 60.

trains, and that women-sledges were their only means of transportation over
the snowy steppes of the east and through the hilly forests of the west?
Yet nothing is truer. Hearne never once mentions dog trains, but quite often
speaks of sledges drawn by women, and the sketch he gives of the toboggan
(reproduced in fig. 60) is evidently intended for human draught. Moreover,