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At this time geographers had placed on their maps a vast continent called Gamaland between America and Asia; and, as if in corroboration of this fiction, when Peter's Cossacks struggled doggedly across Asia, through Siberia, to the Pacific, people on these far shores told tales of drift-wood coming from America, of islands leading like steps through the sea to America, of a nation like themselves, whose walrus-hide boats sometimes drifted to Siberia and Kamchatka.
It was pitiably worn, stained with sea-water, patched and repatched, its frayed edges sewed together again with ravellings of cloth and sea-grasses. Loosening with his teeth the thong of walrus-hide with which it was tied, Ferriss opened it and held it to the faint light of an aurora just paling in the northern sky. "So," he muttered after a while, "so Bennett, too "
Here and there Eskimo oomiaks, fat, walrus-hide boats, slid about like huge, many-legged water- bugs. An endless, ant-like stream of tenders, piled high with freight, plied to and from the shore. A mile distant lay the city, stretched like a white ribbon between the gold of the ocean sand and the dun of the moss-covered tundra. It was like no other in the world.
"All the way," said Muckluck. "He want to be sure." Several bucks came running down from the Kachime, and stood about, coughed and spat, and offered assistance or advice. When at last Ol' Chief was satisfied with the way the raw walrus-hide was laced and lashed, Nicholas cracked his whip and shouted, "Mush! God-damn! Mush!" "Good-bye, Princess.
The men wore their wolf- and beaver-skin caps, with the gay-tasselled ear-flaps flying free, while on their feet were the moose-skin moccasins and walrus-hide muclucs of the north. Here and there a woman was in moccasins, though the majority danced in frail ball-room slippers of silk and satin.
The Eskimo sledge is a contrivance of wood capable of accommodating five or six men, and usually drawn by a team of from six to ten dogs, each dog being fastened to it by means of a separate line of tough walrus-hide. In a short time the long-lashed, short-handled, powerful whips cracked, the teams yelped, the men shouted, and away they all went with much noise over the frozen sea.
The team struggled and strained violently for a few seconds in their efforts to overcome the vis inertiæ of the sledge, and it seemed as if the traces would part; but they were made of tough walrus-hide, and held on bravely, while the heavy vehicle gradually fetched way, and at length flew over the floes at the rate of seven or eight miles an hour.
I kill three ptarmigan with the woman's revolver, and we are made somewhat strong again. But the dogs have nothing to eat. They try to eat their harness, which is of leather and walrus-hide, and I must fight them off with a club and hang all the harness in a tree. And all night they howl and fight around that tree. But we do not mind.
Ho!" to them, and were caught and harnessed, after which Tom cracked a long walrus-hide whip over their heads, and made them lie quiet until Bessie was tucked snugly in the box, and wrapped well in deerskin robes.
It was a MUCLUC of the Innuit pattern, sewed together with sinew threads, and devoid of beads or furbelows. But it was the skin itself that was remarkable. In that it was all of half an inch thick, it reminded me of walrus-hide; but there the resemblance ceased, for no walrus ever bore so marvellous a growth of hair.
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