April, 1S66.] The Babe Given Away. 249 



tressed mother were positive that the child would live ; and her belief 

 in this was confirmed by its temporary revival from what had seemed 

 to Hall when he looked on it in her hood, to be the presence of actual 

 death. The confidence of the parents in his judgment, he thought, how- 

 ever, was weakened by their remembering his having given them hope 

 of the life of their child Too-lie-li-le-ta (the Butterfly) not long before it 

 died in New York in 1863. The an-ge-ko renewed his positive assurances 

 by the answers from the lifted head of the girl, Took-too, after he had. 

 completed his work with the stone. Two days after, the mother, in 

 her despair and professed willingness to do anything to save life, pro- 

 posed to fall in with the custom practiced by her own people of Cum- 

 berland Inlet, which is, in such cases of extremity, to save life hy giving 

 away the child to another person. Her own immediate connections on 

 the inlet had been unfortunate in the loss of their children, but she 

 remembered and related several cases in which, as her people thought, 

 health had been in this way certainly restored. Whether it was by 

 request or not does not appear, but Nu-ker-zhod's wife came to the 

 igloo the same evening, and was witness to the clear answers through 

 the again lifted head of Took-too that the babe must be given away the 

 next morning. Too-koo-li-too had taken full share in the feat of the 

 evening, contributing a peculiar wood-button to the an-ge-ko, who 

 threw it rapidly down, first on one side and then on the other of Took- 

 too^s head, dashing it finally against the igloo wall; and she gave 

 up the babe the next morning to the woman who had consented to 

 receive it from her before the an-koo-ting began ; but, a day or two 

 after, on Hall's telling Nu-ker-zhoo boldly and with fire in his words 

 that the child must go back, another an-koo-ting restored it. The 

 mother had suffered, too, for want of her babe at the breast, and the 



