nto snuff.

I--Needle set in a wood handle, and by rapid rotary motion used to
pierce ivory.]

Mr. John Firth, of the Hudson's Bay Company here, gives us much
information regarding these people who for thirty-seven consecutive
years have traded with him. The Kogmollycs have been here "from the
beginning," the Nunatalmutes moving into this region in 1889, driven out
of their hunting grounds inland from Kotzebue Sound, Alaska, by a
scarcity of game. The two tribes live in peace and intermarry. The aged
among them are respected. Criminals and lunatics are quietly removed
from the drama. Supposed incurables commit suicide and in that act
reach immediately a hot underground heaven.

Nature to these Eskimo is especially benign. The junction of the
Mackenzie and the Peel is covered with a forest of spruce, and even to
the ocean-lip we trace foot-prints of moose and black bear. In the delta
are cross, red, and silver foxes, mink and marten, with lynx and rabbits
according to the fortunes of war. The Eskimo declare that, east of Cape
Parry, bears are so numerous that from ten to twenty are seen at one
time from a high hilltop.

The Chauncey Depew of the Kogmollycs, the man with the best stories and
the most inimitable way of telling them, is Roxi. It was Roxi who gave
us the love story of his cousin the Nuntalmute Lochinvar. This young man
wooed a maid. The girl's father had no very good opinion of the lad's
hunting ability and was obdurate. The lover determined to take destiny
into his own hands. A ravine of ice stretched between his igloo and that
of the family to whom he would fain be son, and over the chasm a
drift-log formed a temporary bridge. Lothario, one night, crossed the
icy gully, entered the igloo of his elect, seized her in her
_shin-ig-bee_ or sleeping-bag and lifted the dear burden over his back.
In spite of struggles and muffled cries from within, he strode off with
her to his side of the stream. The gulch safely crossed, he gaily kicked
the log bridge into the gulf and bore his squirming treasure to his own
igloo floor. He had left his seal-oil lamp burning and now it was with
an anticipative chuckle of joy that he untied the drawstring. We end the
story where Roxi did, by telling that the figure which rolled out
sputtering from the _shin-ig-bee_ was the would-not-be father-in-law
instead of the would-be bride!

CHAPTER XIV

MORALIZING UNDER THE MIDNIGHT SUN

"Into this Universe, and _Why_ no