The Eskimo very highly esteem their own race, but hold Europeans in considerable contempt. They have an unpleasant legend of a woman and a dog being cast away together in a boat or on a floe, by way of accounting for the origin of the whites. Man’s spirit, like the spirit of everything else, is immortal, and destined to a future life in bliss, in the region where the Great Spirit presides over a happy community of very prosperous Eskimo, such as has already been described. Those who die on the hunt go to this heaven, also women in childbirth, and those who die a violent death by any sort of accident. The road to this Eskimo heaven is beset by many obstacles and pitfalls. It is haunted by savage animals, who lie in wait to attack, maim, and kill the wayfarers upon it. Legend has it that at the end of this road, at the rim of this world which is the gate to the next, two huge rocks are set, confronting each other across the narrow path. They sway ominously and often crash together, so that the soul seeking heaven has to run the risk of being caught and crushed between them as he endeavours to get through. All illness other than that derived from these causes is looked upon as a consequence of sin, i.e., the failure to be a good member of the community, the having been of a quarrelsome turn, bad-tempered, mean or ungenerous, and the having failed to own up to these things when exhorted by the conjuror. When a sick person, having confessed yet dies, it is believed that he had some mental reservation and was not quite honest about his confession. These bad folk go to the Eskimo hell, to the awful realms of Sedna. But a third idea of a sort of purgatory comes in, a place to which the damned can escape before they are finally admitted to bliss. The spirit of the conjuror is able to go below and fight the evil one, and liberate the soul in question. The whole transaction is generally a somewhat expensive one for the relatives.