CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 43 
in the ancient rite of exorcising oppressed persons, houses, and other places supposed to be haunted 
by unwelcome spirits, the form for which is still retained in the Roman ritual? And is not our 
enlightened America “the land of spiritualists, mesmerism, soothsaying, and mystical congre- 
gations”? 
When the native of Saint Michael’s invokes the moon, or the native of Point Barrow his crude 
images previously to hunting the seal, in order to bring good luck, is not the mental and emotional 
impulse the same as that which actuates more civilized men to look upon “ outward signs of an 
inward and spiritual grace,” or not to start upon any important undertaking without first invoking 
the blessing of Deity? And are not the rites observed by the natives on the Siberian coast, when 
the first walrus is caught, the counterpart of our Puritan Thanksgiving Day ? 
Perhaps the untutored Eskimo has the same fear of the dangerous and terrible, the unknown, 
the infinite, as ourselves, and parts with life just as reluctantly; but it cannot be said that our 
observation favors the fact of his longevity, although long life seems to prevail among some of 
the circumpolar tribes, the Laps, for instance, who, according to Scheffer, in spite of hard lives 
enjoy good health, are long lived, and still alert at eighty and ninety years.—(De Medecina 
Laponum.) 
Owing to his hard life, the conflict with his circumstances, and his want of foresight, the 
Eskimo soon becomes a physiological bankrupt, and his stock of vitality being exhausted, his 
bodily remains are covered with stones, around which are placed wooden masks and articles that 
have been useful to him during life, as I have seen at Nounivak Island, or they are covered with 
drift wood as observed in Kotzebue Sound, or as at Tapkan, Siberia, where the corpse is 
lashed to a long pole and is taken some distance from the village, when the clothes are 
stripped off, placed on the ground and covered with stones. The cadaver is then exposed in the 
open air to the tender mercies of crows, fuxes, and wolves. The weapons and other personal 
effects of the decedent are placed near by, probably with something of the same sentiment that 
causes us to use chaplets of flowers and immortelles as funeral offerings—a custom that Schiller 
has commemorated in “ Bringet hier die letzen Gaben.” 
The future destiny of these people is a question in which the theologian and politician are not 
less interested than the man of science. Some observers seem to think that their numbers are 
diminishing under the evil influence of so-called civilization. But as every race participates in 
the same moral nature, and the entire history of humanity, according to Herder, is a series of 
events pointing to a higher destiny than has yet been revealed, there is no reason why the sum of 
human happiness, under proper auspices, should not be increased among the Innuit race. Arch- 
deacon Kirkby, a Church-of-England clergyman who has lately visited them in a missionary 
capacity as far as Boothia, speaks in the highest terms of their intelligence and capacity for 
improvement. Here then is a brilliant opportunity for some one full of propagandism and charity 
to imitate the acts of the modern Apostles, and extend the influence of civilization to the gay, lively, 
curious, and talkative hyperboreans whose home is under the midnight sun and on the borders of 
the Icy Sea. 
