FROM THULE TO HUMBOLDT'S GLACIER 



and savoury meat and delicious tallow, and their skins are in 

 great demand. 



The place where Tornge wintered is called by the Eskimos 

 Inugarfigssuaq or '"Great Blood-Bath Fjord." As in all 

 places where human activity has left its marks, tales are bound 

 up with the country. Tornge tells the following : 



At the time when there were many people and all countries 

 were inhabited, many houses were to be found by the Bight of 

 Qaqaitsut near Advance Bay, not far from the great glacier. 



One day two boys started fighting here ; their grandfathers 

 stood looking on. It so happened that one of the old men 

 interfered and started thrashing one of the boys. But the 

 other grandfather became so enraged by seeing his grandchild 

 thrashed, that he went forth and killed the grandchild of the 

 other man. But then the first grandfather killed the other 

 grandchild and the murder of the two boys gave occasion for 

 everybody at the camp to take sides ; so the first thing they 

 did was to kill both the grandfathers. This beginning made 

 people wild and gave rise to a senseless slaughter. A madness 

 which no one could explain had seized on the camp, and all 

 travelled southward, fleeing and killing, so that all the little 

 bays the sledges had to cross were filled with slaughtered men. 

 And all the dead showed black against the white ice, just like 

 seals sunning themselves on a spring day. How long the 

 killing lasted no one knows ; but suddenly they discovered that 

 rage had carried them so far that really one had no quarrel at 

 all with the man one killed. Then they stopped, heartbroken 

 over the wrong they had committed. But the flight continued 

 southwards to lands where the sun was warmer and the winter 

 nights shorter. 



And the largest of the fjords where most dead were lying 

 was later on called "Great Blood-Bath Fjord. . . ." 



This is a simple and naive Eskimo tale of the origin of war 

 — naive, but eternally true wherever man kills. 



This myth Tornge told us as an introduction to the tale of 



55 



