"You do not go up to heaven when you die: you go down,--way, way down, to the bottom of the sea, where the best of everything is. There it's summer all the time. To the Eskimo there is no hell in being hot--hell is terrible cold. Down there where it is summer all the time you don't have to chase reindeer if you want them to pull you about--they come running up to you, obliging as taxicabs, and ask you please to harness them and tell them where you would like to go. And your dinner is ready for you all the time: the seals are swimming about in a kettle of boiling water. The women don't have to spend their time chewing on the sealskins to make them pliable for shoes and garments. The skins come off, all by themselves, already chewed--as nice and soft as can be, fit to make a bed for an Eskimo baby. "His boat and his weapons go with the warrior to his grave, so that his spirit may have the use of them in the next world. "Once, one of the sailors from Newfoundland took something from a grave and hid it in his bunk. "That night the dead Eskimo came looking for his property. "It was pitch dark--but one of the crew saw and felt the ghost prowling about in the cabin! "He yelled, and they lit the lamp. "The ghost went out at the hatchway instantly. "They put out the light, and the ghost came back. Then shouts were heard, 'There he is! He's a Eskimo! He's huntin' in Tom's bunk!' "After that, they kept the lamp lit all night long: and the next day, Tom went back and with trembling fingers restored what he had stolen to the grave. "There are wide chinks in the rocky roof of every properly made Eskimo grave. This is not so that prowling sailor-men may reach in: it is so the spirits will have no trouble going in and out. "You may still find lying in a grave a modern high-powered rifle ready for business, and good steel knives ready to carve those cooked seals down there in Heaven. I've even found pipes all ready filled with tobacco, to save the spirits the trouble of using their fingers to cram the bowl. "Nowadays sealskins are exchanged for European goods, especially guns, and the Labrador Eskimo have lost much of the art of using their kayaks, the canoes into which they used to bind themselves securely, so that when they turned over in the water it did no harm. They would 'bob up serenely' and go right on, and in contests one man would pass his boat right over that of a rival without risk of accident. "The Eskimo and the Indians were bitter enemies. The story of the last fight is, that the Eskimo had their fishing-huts on an island off the mouth of a river. "Down-stream by night crept the Indians in their war-canoes. These they dragged ashore and hid in the rocks. Next morning the Eskimo came upon their enemies and at once attacked them. "The Eskimo are little people as compared with the Indians. The Indians, their squaws fighting like bears beside them, drove the Eskimo back and back toward the sea.