Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 2.djvu/342

Rh the cup to another, states audibly the time and the place of his or her birth. This ceremony is performed by all in succession. Finally, presents of various articles are thrown from one to another, with the idea that each will receive of Sidne good things in proportion to the liberality here shown. Soon after this occasion, at a time which answers to our New Year's day, two men start out, one of them being dressed to represent a woman, and go to every igloo in the village, blowing out the light in each. The lights are afterward rekindled from a fresh fire. When Tookoolito was asked the meaning of this, she replied, "New sun—new light," implying a belief that the sun was at that time renewed for the year.

When one of these meetings and outdoor ceremonies took place, I was absent from the village where most of my Innuit friends were living. Koojesse, Sharkey, and others wished to have me sent for, thinking I would like to be present; but old Artarkparu objected, fearing that I should grow weary before the ceremony was complete, and, retiring from the circle, break the charm. So I was not sent for, but was obliged to gain my information from the natives. The language of this people is peculiar to themselves. They have nothing written, and all that they can tell is derived from oral tradition, handed down from parent to child for many generations. The pronunciation of the same words by Esquimaux living a considerable distance apart, and having little intercourse, is so different that they can hardly understand each other on coming together. It was with the greatest difficulty that the Innuits who came to Field Bay from Sekoselar, or any other place on the northern shores of Hudson's Strait, could make themselves understood by Innuits residing north of them. Sometimes Innuits arrive from Igloolik (which is at the entrance to the Strait of Fury and Hecla), at Northumberland Inlet, and it takes a long time for the two parties to understand each other. Still more difficult is it for a Greenland native to be