So the list goes on. It would doubtless have a value all its own for the student of primitive imagery or fable, and form an addition to ethnographical researches on the Eskimo; but to give it here in extenso would perhaps serve little or no purpose. CHAPTER XV THE SEDNA CEREMONY At the end of the arctic summer, before the young ice begins to form again along the shores, there comes a spell of tempestuous weather, with frequent storms and high, rough tides. Food grows more and more scarce as sealing increases in risk and difficulty. Those intrepid hunters who do venture out, return empty-handed day after day, and it grows high time for something to be done. The goddess Sedna is supposed to be causing these storms and all this dirty weather at sea, to prevent her animals being killed. And so a conjuration has to be performed to liberate the seals. This is the occasion of the most elaborate festival in the Eskimo calendar. It begins by the conjurors, in full dress, calling the people altogether to dispense them for a short space from their marriage ties. Each witch doctor is masked, and clad in women’s clothing. The idea of his amazing get-up, apart from the usual intention to awe the people by grotesqueness or hideousness, is to disguise the face and body, to efface as it were the well-known individual, to make the people lose sight of the conjuror in the representation of a great power at work among them. His dress is partly that of a man and partly that of a woman, and he carries the usual implements used by both sexes. This is to bring the needs of either before the great power, and to intercede for their respective needs. To begin with, the Angakok wears several pairs of nether garments and boots, until he looks very big and out of his usual proportions. He has a woman’s pointed tunic, whose sleeves are elaborately trimmed with fringes and charms. The hood is pulled down over his head, and he wears a mask of black skin tattooed all over. On his shoulders he carries an inflated sealskin float, and over his arm a coil of walrus hide. In his left hand he bears a woman’s skin scraper, and in his right a spear. Thus caparisoned, he emerges from his tent and begins by pairing off the couples.