unexplainable by the light of our present modes of life and thought can
be explained by similar customs and prejudices existing among these
distant tribes. Is there no fragment of primitive superstition or
residue of bygone ages in the supposed influence of the "Evil Eye" in
Ireland, or in the habit of "telling the bees" in Germany? Is there not
something of intellectual fossildom in the popular notion about Friday
and thirteen at table, and in the ancient rite of exorcising oppressed
persons, houses and other places supposed to be haunted by unwelcome
spirits, the form of which is still retained in the Roman ritual? And is
not our enlightened America "the land of spiritualists, mesmerism,
soothsaying and mystical congregations"?

When the native of Saint Michael's invokes the moon, or the native of
Point Barrow his crude images previously to hunting the seal, in order
to bring good luck, is not the mental and emotional impulse the same as
that which actuates more civilized men to look upon "outward signs of an
inward and spiritual grace," or not to start upon any important
undertaking without first invoking the blessing of Deity? And are not
the rites observed by the natives on the Siberian coast, when the first
walrus is caught, the counterpart of our Puritan Thanksgiving Day?

Perhaps the untutored Eskimo has the same fear of the dangerous and
terrible, the unknown, the infinite, as ourselves, and parts with life
just as reluctantly: but it cannot be said that our observation favors
the fact of his longevity, although long life seems to prevail among
some of the circumpolar tribes, the Laps, for instance, who, according
to Scheffer, in spite of hard lives enjoy good health, are long-lived,
and still alert at eighty and ninety years.--(De Medecina Laponum.)

Owing to his hard life, the conflict with his circumstances and his want