CUMBERLAND SOUND AND ITS ESKIMOS. 775 



the movements of the seal, which is taken in by the deception. When 

 he has at last got near enough, he brings down his game with a well- 

 aimed shot. Times are good now, for this kind of hunting yields 

 several seals a day. Then comes the golden season of summer, bring- 

 ing plenty of birds, eggs, salmon, reindeer, seals, and walruses — sum- 

 mer, with its gay flowers and rushing streams, freeing the seas from 

 their icy fetters — a season which the Eskimo loves, and the beauty 

 of which he celebrates in his songs. Thus closes the circle of the 

 year of this people, careless and contented under the most straitened 

 circumstances, whose hospitality and indomitable serenity I learned 

 during my life among them to love and prize. 



When, late in the fall, storms rage over the land, and again release 

 the sea from the icy fetters by which it is as yet only slightly bound ; 

 when the loosened floes are driven one against another, and break up 

 with loud crackings ; when the cakes of ice are piled in wild disorder 

 against or upon one another, the Eskimo believes he hears the voice of 

 spirits which inhabit the mischief -laden air. 



The spirits of the dead — the Tupilak — knock wildly at the huts 

 which they can not enter, and woe to the unhappy person whom they 

 can lay hold of ! He immediately sickens, and is fated to a speedy 

 death. The wicked Krikirn pursues the dogs, which die as soon as 

 they see it with convulsions and cramps ; Kallopalling appears in the 

 water, and drags the brave hunters down, and conceals them in the 

 great hood of his duck-skin dress. All the countless spirits of evil — 

 the Torgnet — are aroused, striving to bring sickness and death, bad 

 weather, and failure in hunting. The worst visitors are Sedna, mis- 

 tress of the under-world, and her father, to whom dead Innuit fall. 



The old stories which mothers relate during the long winter even- 

 ings to their timidly listening children tell of Sedna. Once upon a 

 time there lived a Jnnung, with his daughter Sedna, on the solitary 

 shore. His wife had been dead for some time, and the two led a quiet 

 existence. Sedna grew up to be a handsome girl, and the youth came 

 in from all around to sue for her hand, but none of them could touch 

 her proud heart. Finally, at the breaking up of the ice in the spring, 

 a fulmar flew from over the sea and wooed Sedna with enticing 

 song. " Come to me," it said ; " come into the land of birds, where 

 there is never hunger, where my tent is made of the most beautiful 

 skins. You shall rest on soft deer-skins. My fellows, the storm- 

 birds, shall bring you all your heart may desire ; their feathers shall 

 clothe you thickly ; your lamp shall always be filled with oil, your pot 

 with meat." Sedna could not long resist such wooing, and they went 

 together over the vast sea. When at last they reached the country 

 of the fulmar, after a long and hard journey, Sedna discovered that 

 her spouse had shamefully deceived her. Her new home was not 

 built of beautiful pelts, but was covered with wretched fish-skins, full 

 of holes that gave free entrance to wind and snow. Instead of white 



