OF THE POLAR SEA. 



151 



the inhabitants of the happy land, who, 

 clothed in new skin-dresses, approach and 

 welcome with every demonstration of kind- 

 ness those Indians who have led good lives ; 

 but the bad Indians, who have imbrued 

 their hands in the blood of their country- 

 men, are told to return from whence they 

 came, and without more ceremony precipi- 

 tated down the steep sides of the mountain. 



Women, who have been guilty of infanti- 

 cide, never reach the mountain at all, but 

 are compelled to hover round the seats of 

 their crimes, with branches of trees tied to 

 their legs. The melancholy sounds, which 

 are heard in the still summer evenings, and 

 which the ignorance of the white people 

 considers as the screams of the goat-sucker, 

 are really, according to my informant, the 

 moanings of these unhappy beings. 



The Crees have somewhat similar notions, 

 but as they inhabit a country widely differ- 

 ent from the mountainous lands of the 

 Blackfoot Indians, the difficulty of their 

 journey lies in walking along a slender and 

 slippery tree, laid as a bridge across a rapid 



