good to pray. There is an Evil Spirit, Atti, symbolising cold and death.
Their heaven is a warm underworld reached by entrances from the sea.
Hell is a far, white, dreary plain. The Eskimo pray to Sidne; but it is
wise to propitiate Atti or Tornarsuk, and in this last idea they but
follow their Chinese or Tartar ancestors. In common with all nations,
the Kogmollycs have a tradition of the flood. Mrs. Oo-vai-oo-ak the
Elder said, "This world once covered with the sea." Asked why she
thought so, she replied, "You have been down to the land of the
caribou, eh? Little smooth stones from the sea are there, and shells."

The labrets or lip-ornaments, shirt-stud shaped effects worn in holes
pierced in the cheek, strike us with interest. Is it too daring a
conjecture to trace in these, which Eskimo men so sedulously cherish and
resolutely refuse to talk about, a religious significance? The term
"Kelligabuk" in a literal translation means "Mastodon." This animal,
whose bones not infrequently are unearthed from ice-floes, has been for
all time venerated as a god of the hunting grounds. Is it too fanciful
to suggest that the labrets are a sort of peripatetic idol carried
around on the person as an imitation of the tusks of this God-Mammoth?

East and south of the Mackenzie delta the Eskimo tell of a Supreme
Goddess, Nuliayok, who was once a coy maiden and refused to marry a
mortal. Wooed by a gull, she accompanied the bird to an inland home, to
find instead of her dreams of delight a nest of sticks and rotten fish
on a high-hung ledge. Jostled by the other fulmars, or gulls, who tried
to push her off the rocks, she sent for her father. In the night-time he
came and sailed with her over the water in an oomiak. The deserted
fulmar-bridegroom, taking a leaf out of Prospero's book, raised a storm.
The father, to lighten the craft and propitiate the storm-spirit at the
same time, threw the poor bride over-board, and cut off her fingers as
she clung to the boat. As the four fingers dropped into the sea they
changed respectively into beluga the white whale, nutchook the common
seal, oog-zook the big seal, and ibyl the walrus. After thus giving
origin to the four great sea-friends of the Innuit, the Goddess
Nuliayok let go the boat and went to the world beneath the sea, where
she now lives in a whalebone house with a dog for husband. She cannot
stand erect, but hunches over the ground, holding one foot under her as
a baby does who has n