f the
men is hunting, and, in winter, fishing. They do not even carry home
the game; that duty also falls to the lot of the female, unless when
the family has been starving for some time, when the men condescend to
carry home enough for immediate use.

The horrid practice still obtains among the Nascopies of destroying
their parents and relatives, when old age incapacitates them for
further exertion. I must, however, do them the justice to say, that
the parent himself expresses a wish to depart, otherwise the unnatural
deed would probably never be committed; for they in general treat
their old people with much care and tenderness. The son or nearest
relative performs the office of executioner,--the self-devoted victim
being disposed of by strangulation.[1] When any one dies in winter,
the body is placed on a scaffold till summer, when it is interred.

[Footnote 1: "Quidam parentes et propinquos, priusquam annis et macie
conficiantur, velut hostias caedunt, _eorumque visceribus epulantur_."
The Nascopies do not feast on the "viscera" of their victims, nor do
I believe the inhabitants of India, or of any other country under
heaven, ever did. Yet the coincidence is singular, in other respects,
at such a distance of time and place.]

The Nascopies depend principally on the rein-deer for subsistence,--a
dependence which the erratic habits of these animals render extremely
precarious. Should they happen to miss the deer on their passage
through the country in autumn, they experience the most grievous
inconvenience, and often privations, the succeeding winter; as
they must then draw their living from the lakes, with unremitting
toil,--boring the ice, which is sometimes from eight to nine feet
thick, for the purpose of setting their hooks, and perhaps not taking
a single fish after a day's hard work. Nevertheless, they must still
continue their exertions till they succeed, shifting their hooks from
one part of the lake to another, until every spot is searched. They
understand the art of setting nets under the ice perfectly. Towards
the latter end of December, however, the fish gain the deep water,
and remain still to the latter end of March. Not a fish enters the net
during this period.

Partridges are very numerous in certain localities, but cannot be
trusted to as a means of living, as every part of the country affords
them food, and when much annoyed at one place they move off to
another.

It will be seen from the for