Kulak

“ The KOKIL, or LARGE, GREEN-BILLED MALKOHA (Zanclostomus tristis) , an Indian species, is recognisable by its compressed and curved beak, moderate-sized feet, short toes armed with sharp claws, small, rounded wings, and a long graduated tail; the mantle is deep greyish green, the head and nape of a pure grey; the quills and tail are shaded with green, the feathers of the latter tipped with white; the throat and upper breast are pale grey, the lower breast and an outer circle around the eye [115] white; the eye is deep brown, and the bare line by which it is surrounded a rich scarlet ”

“ The Gōmango, another important man in the village, and the Kudang officiate. A pig and a goat are killed outside the village to Kitung. The blood must flow on the stone. Then liquor and grain are set forth, and a feast is made. About Kolakotta the belief in the active malevolence of Kulbas is more noticeable than in other parts, where deities cause nearly all mischief. Sickness and death are caused by deities or Kulbas, and it is the Kudang who ascertains which particular spirit is in possession of, or has hold of any sick person, and informs him what is to be done in order to drive it away. ”

“ The Guar is supposed to give the Kulba considerable satisfaction, and it does not injure people as it did before. But, as the Guar does not quite satisfy the Kulba, there is the great biennial feast to the dead. Every second year (I am still speaking of Kolakotta) is performed the Karja or biennial feast to the dead, in February or March, after the crops are cut. All the Kolakotta Saoras join in this feast, and keep up drinking and dancing for twelve days. During these days, the Kudangs eat only after sunset. Guns are continually fired off, and the people give themselves up to sensuality. ”

“ At Kaolak males flew to meet any intruder and attempted to decoy the intruder while the female remained with the young, but at Kaolak River an observer would approach to within 80 feet of a nest or young whereupon the female feigned injury by fluttering her wings and moving on her belly in an effort to decoy the intruder, the male meanwhile remaining within 40 feet of the observer. ”

“ Kotuko went on with his carving, and Kadlu threw a rolled bundle of leather dog-harnesses into a tiny little room that opened from one side of the house, slipped off his heavy deerskin hunting-suit, put it into a whalebone-net that hung above another lamp, and dropped down on the sleeping-bench to whittle at a piece of frozen seal-meat till Amoraq, his wife, should bring the regular dinner of boiled meat and blood-soup. ”

“ There is nothing to induce a Cuckoo to enter the nests of these birds, and even if they did their shells would be very tough for its feeble bill; while probably Cuckoos would not peck or impale an egg at any time, but rather try to crush it between the two mandibles. I once saw in an open meadow a Cuckoo rise from near a Skylark's nest, from which it had no doubt retreated a few feet on hearing my approach; I immediately went up, and found a broken Lark's egg in the nest. This was evidently the work of the Cuckoo, which may even have been sucking the egg when I came up. ”

“ How lonely and empty our German woodlands would seem without the cuckoo and the cuckoo cry! As a matter of fact the African primeval forest never hears the same cry that has become so clear to ourselves. Our cuckoo, migrating in a few days all the way from the north to the equator, flies in restless haste through wood and plain, but he is silent. His cry is heard only in our country at home. But in the East Africa district of Pori, amongst many other cries those of two species of cuckoo are heard in rivalry. ”

“ Kadlu, of course, could only distribute the women among the huts of the winter village, for no Inuit dare refuse a meal to a stranger. He never knows when his own turn may come to beg. Amoraq took the girl, who was about fourteen, into her own house as a sort of servant. From the cut of her sharp-pointed hood, and the long diamond pattern of her white deer-skin leggings, they supposed she came from Ellesmere Land. She had never seen tin cooking-pots or wooden-shod sleighs before; but Kotuko the boy and Kotuko the dog were rather fond of her. ”

“ Culuka of the Wet Lands once came down into N'raki's territory, and brought a thousand spears.
Now the Wet Lands are many miles from the city of the king, and the raid that Culuka planned injured none, for the raided territories were poor and stony.
But N'raki, the killer, was hurt in his tenderest spot, and he led his thousands across the swamps to the city of Culuka, and he fought him up to the stockades and beyond. The city he burnt. The men and children he slew out of hand. Culuka he crucified before his flaming hut, and, thereafter, the borders of the killer were immune from attack. ”

“ The Kulba is still a Saora, though a spiritual one. In a village two miles from that in which I saw the gaily ornamented hut, no hut of any kind is built for the Kulba; the bones are merely covered with grass. Weapons, ornaments, etc., are rarely burned with a body outside the Kolakotta villages. In some places, perhaps one weapon, or a few ornaments will be burned with it. In some places the Limma and Guar feasts are combined, and in other places (and this is most common) the Guar and Karja are combined, but there is no burning of houses. In some places this is performed if crops are good. ”

“ What if we made Placer where there’s food and trade? What could we do? There’s Mum, and my six little brothers and sisters, running up like a step-ladder from inches to feet. Then there’s Usak, an Indian man who’s got no equal as a pelt hunter and trailman. Here we’re lords over a limitless territory. We’ve a herd of deer that runs into thousands, and reindeer are the beginning and end of everything to the Eskimo, but wouldn’t be worth dog meat in Placer. ”

“ The sound he had heard was the ruffling of the water stirred by the dip of a paddle.
But his shoulders moved in a shrug, and he dismissed the matter. Why not? There were folk in the Valley of the Fire Hills, other folk than those—Yes, far up, there were many of the folk he hated but did not fear—the Euralians.
Usak was standing on the landing almost lost in the billows of smoke surging down upon him. They belched out of the heart of the wood which concealed the clearing, wherein had stood the secret habitation of the man whom he had designed should know his final vengeance. ”

“ The Kukis are not so strict about the rule enjoining the parents to have no contact with the rest of the village, for they allow drinks to be given by them to all, except the unmarried. Nearly all sacrifices are in part used as occasions for taking omens, and the fowl killed at the birth genna affords excellent omens. They watch the convulsive struggles of its feet in the death agony, and, if the left foot crosses over the right foot, the future is believed to be favourable for the child. ”

“ When a seal was caught, Kotuko the dog would bound forward, his trace trailing behind him, and help to pull the body to the sleigh, where the tired and hungry dogs lay sullenly under the lee of the broken ice.
A seal did not go very far, for each mouth in the little village had a right to be filled, and neither bone, hide, nor sinew was wasted. The dogs’ meat was taken for human use, and Amoraq fed the team with pieces of old summer skin-tents raked out from under the sleeping-bench, and they howled and howled again, and waked to howl hungrily. ”

“ He does not shriek out like some other spirits, but goes moaning and groaning about the forest as if he was in pain. So it will be to the end of the world; he never sleeps and never dies. Some time ago little Koulik, the cobbler of our village, was returning home at night from his brother’s cottage, three versts off, where he had been to the wedding of a niece, when just as he came to the wood by the side of the hill he saw a Leechie looking out at him from among the trees. ”

“ Passed a small village about four miles to the East, and travelled on the ascent near a river course almost the whole day. We had a fine view of Kullallie, a high detached and square rocky hill, which we had seen ever since we left Fajemmia. This hill is quite inaccessible on all sides, and level and green on the top. The natives affirm that there is a lake of water on its summit, and they frequently go round the bottom of the precipices, during the rainy season, and pick up large turtles, which have tumbled over the precipice and killed themselves. ”

“ How the young Cuckoo may act as soon as able to provide for itself is also an interesting matter, for in the case under notice the surroundings are those typical for Red Grouse. The young Cuckoo in this case soon ejected all the other occupants of the nest, and became very fierce, making a dart with its bill at one's fingers with all the combativeness of an infuriated male Turkey. ”

“ You will find that you cannot do it, for the cockle can dig a good deal faster than you can. The fact is that he has a very strong, fleshy organ which we call the “foot,” and with this he can burrow down into the sandy mud so quickly that by the time you have dug to a depth of six inches, he will have gone down to the depth of ten or twelve. ”

“ Then the sound of his voice came, and his eyes widened till their coal black depths revealed something of the savage mood that lay behind them.
“I see him, all thing this night,” he said. “So I come. I, Usak, say him this thing. I tell ’em all peoples white-mans no good. Whitemans steal ’em all thing. White-mans him look, look all time. Him look on the face of white girl. Him talk plenty much. Him show her much thing. Gold? Yes. Him buy her, this whiteman. Him buy her with gold which he steal from her land.” ”

“ Cuculain took the disc from its place and cast it from him southwards. The brazen disc skimmed low across the plain and then soared on high until it showed to those who looked a full, bright face, like the moon’s, after which, pausing one moment, it fell sheer down and sank into the dark waters of the Boyne, without a sound, or at all disturbing the tranquil surface of the great stream, and was no more seen.
“That bright lure,” said Cuculain, “shall no more be a cause of death to brave men. This lawn, O Laeg, is surely the richest of all the lawns in the world. ”

“ They run. Oh, yes. An' the man turn. He run, too. Then Oolak see him face. Oh, yes. Him face of Oolak. Him eyes big with fear. Him cry out. So him run lak hell so the fire not get him."
The silent Oolak had committed himself to speech. He had talked long out of the superstitious dread that beset his Indian heart. He had dreamed a dream that filled him with fear of the future, towards which he looked for its fulfilment.
The grey dawn was searching the obscurity of the fringe of woody shelter in which the camp was made—the last camp on the return journey from Seal Bay to the fort. ”

“ Him Euralian mak east. All time him go east, too. Him eat up all fur. Eskimo all much scare. Him go all time farther. So I not mak him.”
The man’s half angry protest impressed itself upon the girl. Her pre-occupied gaze came back to his dark, saturnine face. An ironical smile played for a moment in the blue of her eyes.
“Does it matter, Usak?” she asked. “Old Ben Needham has gone, an’ the store’s closed down. If you made good trade I guess we’d be left with it piling in our store.” She shook her head almost disconsolately. “Ther’s only Placer for us now. ”

“ This may seem to reflect on the cuckoo's stupidity; and the bird certainly exhibits deplorable ignorance of the fitness of things when it deposits its egg in the nest of the diminutive goldcrest or the cumbersome one of the cushat. A goldcrest might conveniently be stowed away in the gape of a young cuckoo without the latter detecting that the morsel was much more than a normal supply. The nests in which the eggs of cuckoos are most frequently found are those of the meadow-pipit, hedge-sparrow, and reed-warbler. Now the eggs of these birds vary to a very considerable degree ”

“ In the first case of cuckoos, are the African honey cuckoos, and the South American rain cuckoos. The birds of the former of these varieties are noted for guiding depredators to the wild honeycombs; and the latter live upon insects, snakes, and fruits. Here too are the Coucals of Africa, Java, South America, and Australia, including the Australian giant coucal, the Asiatic, South American, and West Indian anis; and the two cuckoos of the tropics, including the gilded cuckoo, the greatspotted cuckoo, and white-crested cuckoo from Africa, and the common European cuckoo. ”

“ Kuiktuk had intended it so.
In his corner of the igloo he had ruminated long and earnestly. Three days had the miners already spent in the camp of the Eskimos, and unless they were encouraged in their own way—that is, unless they were given the explanation they sought, they might remain here a month longer; which stay would doubtless bring greater disgrace to the shaman's household than ever; the sooner they were told where to find the gold the better for all concerned; when they would again take to the trail, and he would be left in the undisputed possession of his Selawik wife whom he loved. ”

“ Thus for two days they followed the course of the Kukpowrak, then they bore off to the left across a nearly level table-land a day’s journey.
There was no sign of human being on this three days’ march; bare tundra and gray limestone or blue slate rocks made the scene one of peculiar desolation, yet, though neither the highbinders nor the boys knew it, a solitary figure kept watch of all their movements and was never far behind them. All the savage hunter had been roused in Harluk, and he trailed the band with the vindictive persistency of an Apache brave. ”