AN-KOO-TING. 



423 



an hour, though under sail and oars. Through this channel the 

 ebbing tide was running toward the head of Frobisher Bay — a 

 curious feature, but accounted for by the position of the islands 

 each side the channel." 



After spending half an hour on the island, we directed our 

 course for the north side of the bay, which we made in one hour ; 

 thence we coasted along toward Eae's Point, where we arrived at 

 3 15 P.M., and made our nineteenth encampment at the place of 

 our ninth. 



During the evening the Innuits fired many salutes, and there 

 was clearly some demonstration making, though I could not tell 

 whether it was to invite the good spirits or to repel the bad, of 

 whose presence thereabouts I suppose the angeko had told them. 



It would seem from the shouts of men, women, and children, 

 and the reports of the guns, as if the 4th of July had come again. 

 Jack's wife kept up a kind of shouting and howling till past mid- 

 night. After she had continued it for over two hours, with a voice 

 that made the mountains about ring, Jack joined her, he being 

 an angeko. At midnight there was a round of guns. Charley 

 was in the same tupic as myself, having been asleep until the fir- 

 ing aroused him. He sprang up, and was but a moment in get- 

 ting ready to join his people. Soon Jack, with his howling wife, 

 came down from the hill where they were, and marched around, 

 keeping up the same hideous noises — so loud and broken, that 

 only throats of brass, and cracked ones too, could equal them. It 

 was a miserable, sleepless night for me — in Bedlam, and racked 

 with pains. 



A remarkable feature of the mountains of Kingaite is that they 

 are covered with snow, while those on the opposite side of the 

 bay, near the coast, are wholly destitute of it. On arriving at the 

 latter from Kingaite I at once felt the great difference of temper- 

 ature, it being much warmer. 



I may here mention, as another illustration of the peculiar cus- 

 toms of the Innuits, that when they kill a reindeer, after skinning 

 it, they proceed to cut off bits of different parts of the animal, and 

 bury them under a sod, moss, stone, or whatever happens to be 

 at the exact spot where the deer was shot. On two occasions I 

 noticed this. Once they cut off a piece of the paunch, then a bit 

 of the nose, next a portion of the meat, skin, and fat, burying 

 these portions together, as just described. I asked one of them if 

 such a custom was always practised by the Innuits when they 



