490 THE ESKIMO ABOUT BERING STRAIT (ETH. ANN. 18 
with her feet raised more than a span above the floor. He asked her 
if she was a live person or a shade, but she did not reply, and he 
went hurriedly into the kashim. There he told the men to hasten out 
and look at the strange being standing in the passageway, whose feet 
did not rest on the earth and who did not belong to their village. All 
the men hurried out, and, seeing her, some of them took down the 
lamp and by its light she was recognized and hurried into the house of 
her parents. 
When the men first saw her she appeared in form and color exactly 
as when alive, but the moment she sat down in her father’s house her 
color faded and she shrank away until she became nothing but skin 
and bone, and was too weak to speak. 
Early the next morning her namesake, a woman in the same village, 
died, and her shade went away to the land of the dead in the girl’s 
place, and the latter gradually became strong again and lived for many 
years. 
THE STRANGE BOY 
(From Andreivsky, on the lower Yukon) 
At a village far away in the north once lived a man with his wife and 
one child, a son. This boy was very different from others, and while 
the village children ran about and shouted and took part in sports 
with one another, he would sit silent and thoughtful on the roof of the 
kashim. He would never eat any food or take any drink but that given 
him by his mother. 
The years passed by until he grew to manhood, but his manner was 
always the same. Then his mother began to make him a pair of skin 
boots with soles of many thicknesses; also, a waterproof coat of double 
thickness and a fine coat of yearling reindeer skins. Every day he sat 
on the roof of the kashim, going home at twilight for food and to sleep 
until early the next morning; then he would go back to his place on 
the roof and wait for daybreak. 
One morning he went home just after sunrise and found his new 
clothing ready. Hetook some food and put on the clothing, after which 
he told his mother that he was going on a journey to the north, His 
mother cried bitterly and begged him not to go, for no one ever went 
to the far northland and returned again. He did not mind this, but 
taking his bear spear and saying farewell, he started out, leaving his 
parents weeping and without hope of ever seeing him again, for they 
loved him very much, and his mother had told him truly that no one 
. ever came back who had gone away from their village to the north. 
The young nan traveled far away, and as evening came on he reached 
a hut with the smoke rolling up through the hole in the roof. Tak- 
ing off his waterproof coat, he laid it down near the door and crept 
carefully upon the roof and looked through the smoke hole. In the 
middle of the room burned a fire, and an old woman was sitting on the 
