Prayer as presented by the white man is recognised as an incantation which should bring immediate and literal results.  An enquiring scientist was seated one day with Oo-vai-oo-ak, the two fishing through adjacent air-holes in the ice.  Calling across to the white man, Oo-vai-oo-ak said, “How is it, brother, have you any fish?”

“No,” replied the man of letters, “I have taken nothing.”

“Have you spoken to God this morning?” asked the Eskimo in a business-like tone.

“No,” said the wilted Walton.

“Well, that’s what’s the matter,” returned Oo-vai-oo-ak; “I always speak to God every morning before I go fishing.  Once, when I went to Herschel Island, a missionary told me what to say.  It always works.  I have many fish.”

The scientist, interested, queried, “And do you do the same when you go duck-hunting or goose-hunting or when you are after seal?”

“No,” eagerly responded Oo-vai-oo-ak, dropping his line and pressing close to the geologist, “Is there a prayer for duck, and for geese, and one for seal?  The missionary never told me that.  You teach it to me, eh?  I like to make sure what to say to catch that fellow,—­goose and seal.”

But, unfortunately for both, the university man did not have the charm.

[Illustration:  Eskimo Kayaks at the Arctic Edge]

Broadly speaking, the Eskimo’s theory of things, evolved from white spirits on the ice-floes or carried across in the age of the mastodon from sires and grandsires in Asia, does not differ materially from our own.  There is a Good Spirit, called by different tribes Cood-la-pom-e-o, Kelligabuk, or Sidne, who dwells high in the zenith, and to whom it is 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?