Page:Eskimo Life.djvu/185

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LOVE AND MARRIAGE
143

doubt well-meant farewell.' When they were about to start, however, Kellitiuk was nowhere to be found, although they shouted and searched for her all over the little island. She had evidently hidden her self away somewhere, and they set off without her; so it appears that she had, after all, no irreconcilable antipathy to Siorakitsok.

Among the heathen Greenlanders, divorce is as simple an affair as marriage. When a man grows tired of his wife—the reverse is of rarer occurrence—he need only, says Dalager, 'lie apart from her on the sleeping-benches, without speaking a word. She at once takes the hint,' and next morning gathers all her garments together and quietly returns to her parents' house, trying, as well as she can, to appear indifferent. How many husbands at home could wish that their wives were Greenlanders!

If a man takes a fancy to another man's wife, he takes her without ceremony, if he happens to be the stronger. Papik, a highly respected and skilful hunter at Angmagsalik, on the east coast, took a fancy to the young wife of Patuak, and, towing a second kaiak behind his own, he set off for the place where Patuak lived. He went to his tent, carried off the woman, made her get into the second kaiak, and paddled away with her. Patuak, being younger than Papik, and not to be compared with him in