OLD WOMAN OF THE SEA 



but, none the less, they thought that the sea, too, 

 was governed by an ill-disposed power. They spoke 

 of an old, old woman, whose home was at the 

 bottom of the sea. She sometimes used to come 

 up to breathe on the shores of Resolution Island. 

 All the living things that swim the seas were under 

 her control; the fish, the seals, the white bears, 

 obeyed her will. She too must be appeased. If 

 not, who knows but she might send a shark to break 

 up the nets and eat the seals that are already 

 entangled in the meshes ! She might tell the seals 

 to swim away, and not go near the hunting-places of 

 the Innuit; she might drive the white bears north- 

 ward, to infest the rocks of Resolution Island, where 

 there are no hunters ; she might feed the codfish 

 with her own hand, and make them lie fat and 

 sluggish while the fisherman plied his hook and line 

 in vain. So she must be appeased ; and to a deep 

 channel in a cleft of the rocks the heathen Eskimo 

 would take his broken knives, his worn-out spear- 

 heads, bits of meat, bones anything was better than 

 nothing and cast them into the water for the old 

 woman, that she might be in a good humour. 



Like all nature peoples, the heathen Eskimos 

 were firm believers in a life after death. Their idea 

 was like that of the Happy Hunting Grounds, with 

 the difference that the best hunting ground to 

 Eskimo ways] of thinking is the sea. And so they 

 laid the hunter on a lonely height overlooking the 

 sea. The grave was just an oblong pile of stones, 

 for the Eskimos knew nothing of digging the only 

 soil on their land is the shallow layer scattered over 

 the hard rock. Within the pile the hunter was laid, 

 dressed in his best clothes ; his harpoon was placed 



43 



