Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/165

146 A remarkable feature of the mountains of Kingaite is that they are covered with snow, while those on the opposite side of the bay, near the coast, are wholly destitute of it. On arriving at the latter from Kingaite I at once felt the great difference of temperature, it being much warmer.

I may here mention, as another illustration of the peculiar customs of the Innuits, that when they kill a reindeer, after skinning it, they proceed to cut off bits of different parts of the animal, and bury them under a sod, moss, stone, or whatever happens to be at the exact spot where the deer was shot. On two occasions I noticed this. Once they cut off a piece of the paunch, then a bit of the nose, next a portion of the meat, skin, and fat, burying these portions together, as just described. I asked one of them if such a custom was always practised by the Innuits when they killed tuktoo, and the answer, given in a very serious tone, was that it had always been so. On the previous day, when Charley killed the deer at our eighteenth encampment, I noticed that, on its being skinned, there was a greenish appearance about the legs and lower parts of the body. This made me remark to Koojesse that I thought the tuktoo must have been sick. He said "no;" but that the peculiar look was from the deer's having been swimming much of late in the cold water of the bay, during his passage from point to point.

The following day, September 16th, we resumed our voyage, but could not get far, owing to severe stormy weather, which compelled us to make our twentieth encampment on Mary's Island, on the west side, and at the entrance of the inlet which I crossed on the morning of August 19th (vide page 99, vol. ii.). Here we were detained two days, and I was now so enfeebled by sickness that it was difficult for me even to write. The Innuit women, particularly Tweroong, were very attentive to me, but the men seemed to consider my sufferings as of little importance. Their demoniac yells, during a