During his absence, the angekok professes to visit the dwelling-place of the particular spirit he has invoked, and he will sometimes astonish his audience with a description of the nether-world and its inhabitants. For instance, there is a female spirit called Aywilliayoo, who commands, by means of her right hand, all the bears, whales, seals, and walruses. Therefore, when a lack of provisions is experienced, the angekok pays a visit to Aywilliayoo, and attacks her hand. If he can cut off her nails, the bears are immediately released; the loss of one finger-joint liberates the small seals; the second joint dismisses the larger seals; the knuckles place at liberty the whole herds of walruses, while the entire hand liberates the whale. Aywilliayoo is tall, with only one eye and one pigtail, but as this pigtail is as large as a man’s leg, and descends to her knee, she may well be contented with it. She owns a splendid house, which, however, Toolemak refrained from entering, because it was guarded by a huge dog, with black hindquarters and no tail. Her father, in size, might be mistaken for a boy of ten years old; he has but one arm, which is always encased in a large bear-skin mitten. Dr. Kane considers it a fact of psychological interest, as it shows that civilised or savage wonder-workers form a single family, that the angekoks have a firm belief in their own powers. “I have known,” he says, “several of them personally, and can speak with confidence on this point. I could not detect them in any resort to jugglery or natural magic: their deceptions are simply vocal, a change of voice, and perhaps a limited profession of ventriloquism, made more imposing by the darkness.” They have, however, like the members of the learned professions everywhere else, a certain language or jargon of their own, in which they communicate with each other. While the angekoks are the dispensers of good, the issintok, or evil men, are the workers of injurious spells, enchantments, and metamorphoses. Like the witches of both Englands, the Old and the New, these malignant creatures are rarely submitted to trial until they have suffered punishment--the old “Jeddart justice”--_castigat auditque_. Two of them, in 1818, suffered the penalty of their crime on the same day, one at Kannonak, the other at Upernavik. The latter was laudably killed in accordance with the “old custom” ... custom being everywhere the apology for any act revolting to moral sense. He was first harpooned, then disembowelled; a flap letdown from his forehead “to cover his eyes and prevent his seeing again”--he had, it appears, the repute of an evil eye; and then small portions of his heart were eaten, to ensure that he should not come back to earth unchanged.