SEA GODDESS OF THE ARCTIC.

Dunstan Times, Issue 3355, 3 January 1927, Page 2

SEA GODDESS OF THE ARCTIC.

ESKIMO CHANTS TO “GIVER OF SEALS.” Men who patrol a thousand miles alone, through the bitter cold ot the Arctic night; Eskimos who chant strange litanies to a sea-goddess who lives beneath the ice-lloes; the way of the King’s Writ where the Englishman is god and a hundred lonely men of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police rule three million square, miles ot savage land. These were among the subjects mentioned by Captain Harwood Steele, the authority- on Eskimos, who said lately that if the recently discovered murder of Professor Marvin, of the Peary Polar Expedition, had taken, place in Canadian territory it would have been investigated long ago. Captain Steele stated that the Eskimos regard the white man as very much of a god. and the word of the police is regarded as law. The Eskimo is intensely superstitions. Ho believes the world is full of spirits, most of whom are bed. Chief among the spirits is a woman named Kannapakfaluk. who lives at the bottom of the sea and controls the weather and the supply of seals. The Eskimo sorcerers will sit on the ice in the winter and call up the spirit to the lower edge of the ice, while tlie other Eskimos sit round, and declare that they can hear the spirit answering the, questions put to her by the sorcerer. Captain Steele is the author, journalist and traveller whose father, the late Major-General Sir S. B. Steele, was a leading official of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police from its initiation hall a century ago. He has had great experience' of Arctic Canada and the Eskimos, and speaks with authority, “The most notable Eskimo crime of recent years,” said Captain Steele, “was tbe murder, on Baffin’s Island, in April, 1920. of a trader named .lanes, at a spot 400 miles north of the Arctic circle. “Staff-Sergeant' A. H. Joy, of the Canadian Mounted Police, was detailed to investigate. He went to Baffin’s Island and spent the winter alone among the.-JSskimos, slowly piecing together the evidence. At last the chain of evidence against a man named Nookudlah, an Eskimo, was complete. “He arrested Nookudlah in his role as a police officer. Then, as coroner, he held an inquest on the murdered man. Finally, as a justice, he instituted a court of summary jurisdiction and committed Nookudlah for trial. “Nookudlah was found guilty; hut .here were mitigation circumstances. “He was sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment in Manitoba. It was felt, however, at the end of two years, that he had suffered sufficiently, and he was taken b'Uck to Baffin’s Island.”

In the centre of Broadway (New York) at Sixty-sixth street, there stands a grim monument; —“To the memory of 543 persons killed by reckless drivers in the streets of New York City since January 1. 1926.” And the numbers continue to rise day by day. One-way, streets, no parking, street wideninix, more garage, no tramcan-. control by signal lights, are all but expedients to make possible more and (pricker traffic and fewer accidents. The I'nited States has 22,000.000 motorcars; the rest of the world has 4,000.000.