CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 43 



in the ancient rite of exorcising oppressed persona, 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 Schefifer, 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 Tapkau, 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, foxes, 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 ofiferings — 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. 



