swAXTON] TLINGTT MYTHS AND TEXTS 241 



it down, press it against his heart and weep as he held it there. He 

 wept all the time. 



After this man had been a widower a long time he married again. 

 One evening, when he was sitting on the bed playing with his new 

 wife, the basket fell right over his head. He tried to pull it off, and his 

 wife laughed, not knowing why it had been up there. When he was 

 unable to pull it away his wife also tried, but it stuck tight around 

 his neck. He became frightened and worked very hard at it. Sud- 

 denly the basket said to him, ' 'Yes, pull me off of your head. Why 

 don't you press me against your heart again?" At last if they had 

 not cut the strings the basket would have choked him to death. Then 

 he put it farther back and in the morning threw it into the fire. 



82. THE CRYING-FOR MEDICINE 



One of the Kasqlague'di named Floating (NAlxa'c), living at Wran- 

 gell, had a wife called Axtci'k! who kept running away from him. 

 He was a great hunter and hunted continually among the mountains 

 of Bradfield canal accompanied by his slave. One day, as the}^ 

 were pulling along in a canoe wliile the dogs ran on shore, they heard 

 the dogs barking at a certain place. They landed and ran thither. 

 Then they saw the dogs lying on the ground wdth saliva dropping 

 from their mouths, while a small bear ran along some distance 

 off. The hunter saw this bear climb up the side of a cliff and was 

 about to pursue it when he suddenly lost all of his strength and 

 lay there just like his dogs. He watched the bear, however, and saw 

 it go into a hole in the very middle of the cliff. Then he said, "That 

 is not a bear. It could not have climbed up there and have gone 

 into that cliff had it been one. It must be something else." 



Floating thought a great deal of his wife and was suifering much 

 because she had now been gone from him for eight months. 



AVlien he saw this bear go into the inaccessible hole in the cliff, he 

 went back to town and made a very large, strong rope out of roots 

 and a cedar-bark basket large enough to hold one person. With 

 these he went back again to the cliff and climbed to a position above 

 the hole the bear had entered. Then he tied a rope around his slave's 

 waist, and another to the basket and put the slave inside. He was 

 going to lower him down to the hole. 



Now the man said to his slave, ''Wlien I get you to the mouth of 

 the hole, shake this basket very hard so that I may know it." He gave 

 him a little wooden dipper and said, "Dip that into the hole and see 

 what you get out." Then he lowered the slave. When the latter put 

 his dipper into the hole it came out filled with ants. Then the slave 

 screamed, but his master said, ''I will let you drop if you don't hold 

 up. Put that dipper in again and see what you bring out. The slave 

 49438— Bull. 39—09 16 



