_Eastern Eskimo_
No man can ever go into the Sky Land until he is dead; so all the
people say. The sky that we see is a hard, blue stone, built up over
the earth just as the igloo is built with snow, rounding, over the
Eskimo family. But where the land and sea meet are high precipices
which slope inward so that no one can climb up in the Sky Land. This
blue dome is very cold, and sometimes it is covered with crystals of
frost which fall as snow, and then the sky becomes clear.
The clouds are large bags of water, owned by two old women who push
them across the sky. The thunder is their voice and the lightning
their torch. When water leaks out of the seams of the bags, it rains
on earth. If a spark of lightning falls upon anyone, he has to go to
the Ghost Land.
At each corner of the Earth World there lives a mighty being, with a
very large head. When any one of these breathes, the wind blows.
Some breathe violent storms and others summer breezes. Each wind
spirit has many powerful servants.
At the edge of the Earth World, and beyond the precipices, is a
great abyss. A narrow pathway leads across it to a land of
brightness and plenty and abundance and warmth. To this place none
but Raven and the dead can go. When spirits wish to speak to people
on earth, they make a whistling noise and people answer only in
whispers. Auroras are the torches held in the hands of spirits to
guide the newly dead over the abyss.