A COMIC TOUCH 



drop all your loose belongings in without fear of 

 losing them, and you have no need to cling on 

 constantly; you can loll in comfort and" but my 

 words were cut short by a lurch of the sledge as it 

 passed over a buried boulder, and off I rolled into the 

 soft snow, where I remained sticking head downwards, 

 with futile legs waving in the air. The drivers of 

 the last sledge pulled me out and set me right way 

 up ; and there I sat, scraping the freezing snow out 

 of my neck and ears and hair, while everybody 

 laughed. 



Early in the afternoon we lurched down a steep 

 place on to the sea-ice, and saw a clear, firm road in 

 front of us. 



Johannes came to my sledge for a talk, and told 

 me marvellous tales of the land over which we had 

 crossed. "Nellojut nunangat" (that is the land 

 of the heathen), he said ; " there is a big village of 

 iglos up there, all tumbling to pieces, and you can 

 find flint harpoons and broken stone pots among the 

 rubbish buried in the floors. No man has lived 

 there for a long time" " ovatsiaro-pararluk " (a 

 far-away by-and-by) was his picturesque way of 

 putting it " and the people do not often travel that 

 way. They are a little frightened, for it is strange 

 and lonely among the tumble-down huts, arid there 

 is a big heathen graveyard on the headland, where 

 they used to lay the dead hunters down in their 

 stone graves in sight of the sea. But I have been 

 there, tautuk (I should like to go again) ; why, that 

 steep place that we came down is a river in the 

 summer, and the trout are so many in it that you can 

 catch them with your hands in the pool under the 

 waterfall." But Johannes's story came to an end, for 



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