128 J. C. SCHTJLTZ ON THE 



He is described to be as lean, gloomy and eruel as a Saturn. Tbe " Kongeusetokit " are 

 marine spirits ; they catch and devour the foxes which frequent the shores in order to catch 

 fish. There are also spirits of the lire called " Ingnersoit," who inhalnt thei'ocks on the sea 

 shore and appear in the form of the will-o'-the-wisp ; they are said to have been the inhabi- 

 tants of the world before the deluge. When the earth was turned round and immersed in 

 water they changed themselves into flames and took refuge among the rocks. They 

 frequently steal men away from the strand in order to have companions, and treat them very 

 kindly. The "Tunnersoit" and "Innyarolit" are mountain spirits, the former more than 

 twenty feet and the latter only six inches long, but at the same time exceedingly clever. 

 These latter are said to have taught the Europeans their arts. The "Erkiglit" have dog- 

 like countenances and are war-like spirits, enemies to mankind, but they inhabit only the 

 east side of the Eskimo country, so that this belief may be a mere tradition of the hatred felt 

 towards the ancient Norsemen. " Sillegiksartoj " is the ^olus of Greenland ; he dwells 

 upon an ice-field and regulates the weather. The water has its pecul.iar spirits, and when 

 the Eskimo meet with an unknown spring, in case tlxere is no angekok at hand, the oldest 

 man in the company must first drink of it in order to rid it of an}' malicious spirit. When 

 certain meats prove detrimental to any one, especially women with children, the " masters of 

 the food " are blamed for enticing them to eat contrary to the rules of abstinence. Tlie sun 

 and the moon are inhabited by their separate spirits who were formerly men, and the air 

 itself is a spiritual intelligence which men may irritate by criminal conduct and apply to for 

 counsel. Such were some of the superstitions of this strange race varying in degree and form 

 along their extended coast line, and if some one who knows their language would undertake 

 to reduce these Eskimo superstitions to a regular system they would probably be found in 

 some respects to rival the mythology of tlie Greeks and Romans. 



Space necessary for more than a mere reference to some of the peculiarities of the 

 Eskimo, cannot of course be taken ; were it otherwise the remarkable homogeneity of the 

 language spoken in their detached settlements along five thousand miles of coast line from 

 Siberia to Labrador would be at once apparent. East coast Eskimo interpreters were gener- 

 ally taken bj' ships which sought the northwest passage from east to west and west to 

 east, and while there were indeed difterences of dialect among the various bands along the 

 Arctic coast and islands, yet the Eskimo from the mouth of the Mackenzie may be under- 

 stood by those of Point Barrow, at the mouths of tlie Coppermine and Back's Great River, 

 as well as on the northwest coast of Hudson's Bay, and the north coast of Lalirador and also 

 on the arctic coast of Alaska and Siberia. Where the race comes in contact with other 

 Indians on the east and west coasts of Hudson's Bay and the American and Asiatic coasts 

 of Behring Sea, there is an incorporation of foreign words and the idiom is somewhat 

 changed, but with these exceptions there is a homogeneity which is surprising, considering 

 the fact that their communities, especially in the far north on islands where Parry met them, 

 and in Greenland north of the great ice barrier, where when Ross first saw them they believed 

 themselves the only Eskimo, and, indeed, the only people in the world. This remark- 

 able homogeneity of language may be in some degree accounted for by their shunning and 

 fearing all Indians south of them, a feeling so cordially reciprocated among sub-arctic 

 savages that, till missionary influences were brought to bear on both, a broad line of demar- 

 -cation was drawn which so fixvoured some wild animals, especially the reindeer, that hundreds 



