no TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VoL. ly. 



had then, her husband and herself, agreed as to the plan to follow to 

 effect her deliverance. 



" Therefore, after they had eaten to their content, she purposely- 

 attempted to play with the lynx, while her husband, who was lying on 

 the opposite side of the fireplace, feigned sleep. But each time that she 

 tried to touch the lynx she was sharply rebuked : ' Skranthalionkrcs* 

 you will throw a spell over my arms,' he would say. Yet she would not 

 desist in her endeavors to keep him awake so as to render his sleep more 

 profound once he would fall asleep. 



" At length after he had been a while soundly sleeping, she motioned 

 her husband with a stick that now was the time to act. Therefore he 

 cautiously seized his bow which was double pointed, as one end of it was 

 provided with a long horn dart while the other had a stone spear head. 

 With all his might, he sank the horn dart into the lynx's breast, while 

 his wife chopped off his head with a stone adze she had kept concealed 

 in her bosom. 



" After he had transpierced him with the horn dart, he and his wife 

 turned him over and he repeated the same operation on his back with 

 the stone spear head of his bow. They did not leave him till he had 

 been reduced to a shapeless mass of bone and flesh. 



" Ever since, our women have been afraid of the lynx, for he is indeed 

 a ravisher." 



In the estimation of the Carriers of the generations gone by, fishing 

 was not fraught with the same perils as hunting, and therefore few, if 

 any, superstitious precautions accompanied it. Indeed the only vain 

 observance which can be mentioned in this connection was that which 

 forbade women having their monthly, flow to cut or carve salmon, 

 inasmuch as this was reputed to seriously endanger the health and 

 especially enfeeble for life the arms of the transgressor. 



When no shaman was at hand to consult about the quantity of the 

 salmon coming up, either the elements or some peculiarities in the 

 vegetable kingdom afforded them a means of prognosticating the nature 

 of the forthcoming run of fish. Thus a continually rumbling thunder or 

 the early fall of the service-berries portended to them an abundant 

 harvest. I would not affirm that these ideas have no longer any hold 

 on the mind of a few modern Carriers. Those persons who are au fait 

 with the popular notions current among the lower classes of the Old 

 World will, I think, hesitate before tasking my Indians with uncommon 

 credulity. 



* Thakoiikres is hard to translate in English. The lynx means that her touch while in her 

 unclean state will incapacitate him for the chase. 



