EVENING PRAYERS. 203 



and knew a little English, I was told that a narwhale 

 was seen many years ago on this coast. It appears that 

 this polar animal occurs now as far south as Hudson's 

 Strait. Captain Handy told me that on the north side 

 of Hudson's Strait the narwhale commonly goes in 

 herds of thirty. Malmgren, a Finnish author, says that 

 the narwhale leaves Spitzbergen in summer for more 

 northern and colder latitudes.* 



None of them, however, had ever seen a walrus, but 

 the white bear was said to be not uncommon ; and he 

 mentioned the wolverine as occurring in the neighbor- 

 hood. Showing Caspar the picture of the lobster in my 

 Gosse's Zoology, he said it, with the shore crab, was not 

 found here, but south of Grosswater Bay (Hamilton 

 Inlet) ; the salmon (kavishilik) were taken in nets ; he 

 was also familiar with the starfish; which he called 

 ougiak. 



At sunset the chapel bell rang for evening prayers, 

 and all left their work or houses and made their way to 

 the sanctuary. The men and women sat separately and 

 at opposite ends of the room, even entering by a sepa- 

 rate door ; and the oldest members of the congregation 

 sat back on the higher benches, probably to overawe the 

 juveniles on the front seats ; although these must have 

 been duly restrained by the presence of the seven mis- 

 sionaries who sat against the opposite wall on the right 

 side of the leader's desk, their seven wives on the left. 

 The service was brief, lasting twenty minutes, consisting 

 of an invocation or address in Eskimo, and a few chants 

 to German tunes, the congregation joining in the music 



* Wiegmann's Archiv fUr Naturgeschichte, 1864, p. 96. 



