SINGAJUK AND HIS DESCENDANTS

111. SINGAJUK AND HIS DESCENDANTS.—Singajuk was a celebrated hunter living in Kangek (near Godthaab). His wife miscarried, and brought forth a poor little wretch of a child, that was swaddled in the skin of an eider-duck, and had to be fostered with the utmost care to keep it alive. This child was called Mangilak, and became one of the most powerful of men. His first deed was killing an ingnersuak. Afterwards he was once caught in a gale of wind at sea, but espying a solitary spot of smooth water and a gull swimming in it, by dint of listening to its voice he learned a spell for procuring a calm; and from that time he was not to be equalled in kayaking. His mother then persuaded him to marry, and he took a wife, who, however, shortly afterwards died. Being almost an angakok, he used to visit her grave and talk with the deceased, and on one occasion she gave him a mussel-shell containing a drink to endow him with angakok wisdom. Mangilak married a second wife, and got a son, called Akajarok, whose daughter became the grandmother of the man who related this story (to the author). Akajarok died a Christian. Mangilak also was baptised, and named Moses, but was too full of angakok wisdom to become more than a nominal Christian.