379 



both are without words, but now and then a phrase may be woven 

 into them. In regard to voices, there is a great difference 

 between the roaring, open-air voices of the men and the thin, 

 somewhat soft speech and tones of the women , which speak 

 of adaptation to the business of the house and marriage 

 subjection. 



The principal time when they sing is during the dark period, 

 and the real singers are the angakoks, who sing to the accom- 

 paniment of the beating of a small stick on the frame of the 

 gut-skin drum , which is of the same kind but on the whole 

 smaller than among other Eskimo tribes. In the beginning of 

 August 1909 I was present at an actual musical entertainment 

 at Umanark given by two angakoks, Masaitsiak and Ajorsalik. 

 At midnight the sun had already begun to go down behind the 

 mountains on the north side of Wolstenholm Sound, so that 

 there was a couple of hours twilight. On a night of this kind 

 Napsanguark had invited his kinsmen to a feast consisting of 

 a rotten seal, which had been caught on the spring-ice and 

 had since then lain in the depot to become rotten in the course 

 of the summer. 



In front of Napsanguark's tent a sledge was set up on end, 

 resting on the uprights, and a skin was hung between the tent 

 and the sledge, so as to give some shelter against the coolish 

 wind from the west. The seal was laid on the ground right 

 in the corner between this skin and the front of the tent. It 

 had just been cut open and the blubber had been removed and 

 placed on one side. The flesh lay swimming in the blood on 

 the skin and in the opened abdomen. The men stood or sat 

 round about , and now and then they reached forward to the 

 food and cut themselves a lump of the rotten flesh and stuffed 

 it into their mouths. The women and children, who kept 

 mostly inside the tent, also came forward now and then to 

 obtain their share, and the children especially looked quite 

 wild as they ran about with their faces all covered with blood, 

 xxxiv. 25 



