104 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



devolve the cai-es of the household, they make all the clothes and 

 boots, melt ice over their lamps and do whatever little cooking 

 there is to be done. They all go in for some amusements, a sort 

 of foot-ball is played on the ice ; wrestling is a favourite amuse- 

 ment with the men. The children romp and play about, in fact 

 have games very similar to those played by white childi'en. It is 

 qviite marvellous the amount of cold these people can endure, they 

 are inured to it from infancy. Many and many a time I have 

 known women spend a whole day loitering about near the house 

 with the temperature 10 and 20 below zero, their necks uncovered, 

 nothing on their heads, and stark naked babies sprawling half out of 

 the mother's hoods ; how the children stand it I cannot tell, but that 

 the poor little youngsters do feel the cold I am convinced, as they 

 often cry most piteously. Both men and women sometimes are cold ; 

 they would often stand at my door and beg for admission saying 

 they were cold. E-ke is their word for cold. 



The marriage laws are very simple, in fact as far as I could learn 

 the woman, without form or ceremony, takes up her abode in the 

 igloo of her intended. Neither are the funeral obsequies elaborate, 

 the body being carried to a distance from the tents and covered with 

 stones. On top of the grave are placed the man's hunting imple- 

 ments together with a cup and a knife. This would seem to imply 

 that they have some idea of a future state ; but what their religion, if 

 any, really is, I was unable either to discover from the natives or to 

 learn from the Hudson's Bay Company, men who have lived among 

 them for years. 



Two days after Christmas I paid a visit to the Eskimo igloos ; I 

 and one of my men started at seven o'clock in the morning, long 

 before daylight, and walked across the ice, following the path beaten 

 by the natives in their daily visits to the house; the temperature was 

 23° below zero, and it was blowing fresh and drifting in our faces. 

 After having walked about two miles we met two Eskimos ; one of 

 them, an old man named Pugweek, put his hand over my cheek, giving 

 me to understand that it was freezing. In about a quarter of an hour 

 we arrived at the snow houses, all of which were quite new, and 

 removed about half a mile from those the natives occupied duiing 

 the early part of the month. Let me describe some of the people. 

 I first visited Pugweek's residence ; stooping down and entering 

 almost on hands and knees I found myself in a passage about twelve 



