THE POLAR SEASONS. 
209 
tudes derives from his own experience and necessities 
a more accurate and practical system of notation. 
He measures his life by winters, as the American 
tndian does by the summers, and for a like reason. 
Winter is for him the great dominant period of the 
year: he calls it “ okipok,” the season of fast ice. 
But when the day has come again, and the first 
thawing begins to show itself in the sunshine, as 
winter declines before the promise of spring, he tells 
you that it is “ upernasak,” the time of water-drops. 
It is then the snow-bird comes back and the white 
ptarmigan takes a few brown feathers. His well- 
known heath, too, the irsuteet, (Andromeda tetragonal) 
is green again below its dried stems under the snow. 
About the end of May, or a little later, comes 
“ upernak,” the season of thaws. It is his true sum¬ 
mer. Animal and vegetable life are now back again: 
the floes break upon the sea and drift in ice-rafts about 
the coasts; snow is disappearing from the hill-tops; 
and the water-torrents pour down from the long-sealed 
ravines and valleys. 
About the middle of August the upernak has passed 
into the season of no ice, “aosak,” the short interval 
between complete thaw and reconsolidation. It is 
never really iceless; but the floes have now drifted to 
the south, and the sea along the coast is more open 
than at any other period. It ends with the latter 
weeks of September, and sees the departure of all 
migratory life. 
The fifth season is a late fall, the “okiakut,” when 
Vol. II.—14 
