The underlying idea of much of all this is doubtless that of promoting sociability and good feeling all round. The Eskimo are an intensely sociable people, and, to the very limited extent of their powers and opportunities, delight in entertainment. These festival songs, for instance, have required a certain amount of preparation. They are composed about some event that has taken place and caught the singer’s attention. They have been rehearsed and, if successful, will be repeated all through the long winter nights, when the folk spend so much weather-bound time in visiting each other and exchanging tales and gossip round the igloo lamps. No tribesman likes to be laughed at, so he really does his best over his song. There is a real groundwork of sense about the ceremony of visiting each house in turn, and the scramble for presents. In the first place, it is a symbol of goodwill and plenty. Each householder is expected to keep up appearances by doing this sort of thing, and he uses every effort to gain the wherewithal to meet the obligation. This militates against laziness and any tendency to hoard—great crimes in the Eskimo estimation of things. The hunter strains every nerve to provide the things his neighbours scramble for, and the women of the village do their utmost, so far as attractiveness and domesticity go, to attach such men as husbands. Again, by a general scramble, the poorer and less lucky folk get a good many windfalls otherwise unobtainable. The roysterers flock off in a body, to make the round of the encampment, stopping at every man’s house in turn. The owner goes inside, makes a selection of all sorts of unconsidered trifles—generally bits of sealskin used for the legs of boots, with different kinds of sewing sinew attached—and, returning to the vociferous crowd waiting outside, scatters these things broadcast. There is a grand commotion and no end of noise, as the oddments are battled for. As this performance is repeated at every house in the village it necessarily takes some time. Little information is obtainable as to the significance of these games or ceremonies, or whatever the Eskimo themselves may consider them. The annual pairing off doubtless serves to keep up the numbers of the tribe. Women are always in excess of men, owing to hunting fatalities among the latter, and other causes; and some of these, although married, may be childless. The Sedna proceedings tend to remedy this state of things to a satisfactory extent. The writer’s own idea is that, in addition to the main responsibilities of the festival, which rest on the shoulders of the Kiluktetok, the doings of the lesser lights of the order of conjurors are designed more or less to keep things going merrily and to establish themselves firmly in the good-will of the community.