ents of his country, and Death, when it arrives, usually comes in
some violent form. Old age has few terrors for the Eskimo, for he seldom
lives to reach it. He dies, as a rule, in harness, drowned by the
capsizing of his skin canoe, caught by the overturning of an iceberg, or
crushed by a snow-slide or a rock-slide. It is seldom that an Eskimo
lives to be more than sixty years of age.

Strictly speaking, the Eskimos have no religion, in the sense in which
we use the word. But they believe in the survival of the person after
death, and they believe in spirits--especially evil spirits. It may be
that their lack of any idea of a beneficent God, and their intense
consciousness of evil influences, result from the terrible hardships of
their lives. Having no special blessings for which to be grateful to a
kind Creator, they have not evolved a conception of Him, while the
constantly recurring menaces of the dark, the bitter cold, the savage
wind and gnawing hunger, have led them to people the air with invisible
enemies. The beneficent spirits are those of their ancestors (another
Oriental touch), while they have a whole legion of malevolent spirits,
led by Tornarsuk, the great devil himself.

They are constantly trying to propitiate Tornarsuk by incantations; and
when they kill game, an offering is made to him. The devil is supposed
to have a keen appreciation of these tidbits. On leaving a snow igloo
the Eskimos are careful to kick the front out of it, that the evil
spirits may not find shelter there, and when they throw away a worn-out
garment it is never left intact, but is torn in such a way that the
devil may not use it to warm himself. A comfortable devil is presumably
more dangerous than a shivering one. Any sudden and unexplained barking
or howling among the dogs indicates the invisible presence of Tornarsuk,
and the men will run out and crack their whips or fire their rifles to
scare away the invader. When, on board the _Roosevelt_ in winter
quarters, I was suddenly aroused from sleep by the crack of rifles, I
did not think there was a mutiny aboard--only that Tornarsuk had ridden
by upon the wind.

When the ice presses hard against the ship, an Eskimo will call on his
dead father to push it away; when the wind blows with special violence,
ancestors are again appealed to. Passing along a cliff, on a sledge
journey, a man will sometimes stop and listen and then say: "Did you
hear what the devil said just then?" I ha