NORTH MAGNETIC POLE AND NORTHWEST PASSAGE. 271 



wife obeyed blindly, but elderly widows were sometimes personages 

 of great influence. 



The religious opinions of the Eskimo were like our own in that 

 they had an understanding of a good and an evil being, of punishment 

 and reward. If a man had behaved as he should in this life, then he 

 would go to the hunting fields in the moon ; and had he been a bad 

 man he nuist go under the earth. During the whole of our stay 

 among them there only occurred, as far as I know, four births and two 

 deaths, the latter in both cases being suicide. It is not considered to 

 be wrong, but is, however, only resorted to when the pain in an illness 

 is too great to be borne. The way in which they do it is, I think, 

 peculiar to them alone. A sealskin thong is stretched across the hut 

 1^ feet above the floor. The sick person is left alone in the hut, and the 

 others go outside. They, however, have peepholes in the wall, 

 through which they follow events. The sick person now kneels 

 down and endeavors to suffocate himself by pressing his throat 

 against the strained thong. If the unfortunate person is unable to 

 do the business for himself, or it seems to be taking too long, one of 

 those outside comes in and expedites matters by pressing his head 

 down on the thong. Fighting with closed fists occurs now and then, 

 and nnirder is not unknown. It thus happened in the summer of 

 1!)04, at the station, that a boy 1'2 years of age accidentally shot 

 another boy of T in a tent. The father of the boy who was killed 

 innnediately seized the other, who, for that matter, was his adopted 

 son, and dragged him out of the tent and stabbed him to death. 

 Their dead they seAV up in a reindeer skin and lay them on the ground. 

 A few articles, such as a bow, spear, arrows, and other things, are 

 placed beside them. AVe found many an interesting object in this 

 manner. 



On April 2 Lieutenant Hansen and Sergeant Ristvedt started on 

 their sledge journey to chart the east coast of Victoria Land. They 

 had two sledges, twelve dogs, and equipment for seventy days. The 

 provisions were measured as shortly as possible so as to reduce weight. 

 All the same, it is very necessary on a long journey of the kind that 

 everything should be carefully planned so as really to hold out the 

 requisite time. The depot, which had been made the year before, had 

 been entirely spoiled by bears, l)ut Lieutenant Hansen and his com- 

 panion shot bears, seals, and reindeer, and thus spun the journey out 

 for eighty-four days. Excellent work was done. The east coast of 

 Victoria Land was charted right up to the seventy-second parallel. 

 The land formerly seen l)y Doctor Rae at the south end of Victoria 

 Strait proved to be a group of over a hundred small low islands. 

 These we- e charted on the way back. An interesting event from this 

 journey was the meeting with another unknown Eskimo tribe, the 

 " Kiilnermimn Eskimo," whose hunting fields extend from the Cop- 



