Hare Indians or Dog-ribs. They are a lively, cheerful people. Dancing and singing, in which they excel other Indians, are their favourite amusements, and they practise leaping, wrestling, and other athletic exercises. All these are called into play when different bands meet on friendly terms. They are inveterate talkers. Every new comer, as he arrives at a trading post, halts at the door of the house and makes a speech, in which he tells where he has been, what he has done, how hard he has laboured to obtain furs, and urges the propriety of his being well paid for his exertions, relating also the news he obtained from other tribes, and anything that has chequered his life or crossed his thoughts since his former visit. Established etiquette forbids any one to interrupt him until he has concluded.

Of their religious notions no full account has as yet been obtained, but they speak of good and evil spirits, and belief in shamanism is common to them, the Eskimos, and the Chepewyans. The evil spirit whose malevolence they dread is propitiated through their shamans, who profess to have the sole power of communicating with the unseen world, and of foreseeing deaths and foretelling events. Such powers clothe the shamans with authority and awfulness. Should any one have a quarrel with the members of another tribe, his death

is attributed to sorcery, or, as the interpreters render it, to " evil medicine." A strong party is forthwith mustered, to seek the band which the shamans have designated, and to demand bloodmoney for their relative, or to avenge his death should compensation be denied. The amount claimed varies with the rank of the deceased, and the estimation in which he was held, from twenty "skins" of beads to thrice that quantity. Mr. Murray mentions a bloody instance of this superstition which occurred in 1847. A woman of the Kutchakutchi tribe dying suddenly, her death was at first attributed to the presence of white people on their lands, but the matter being debated, this opinion was overruled, and the blame was attached to a band named Teytse-kutchi, residing further down the river, some of whom had a dispute with the husband of the deceased. Upwards of thirty warriors started on the blood-quest, and five of the unsuspecting Teytse-kutchi happening to ap proach a sleeping place of the war-party were waylaid. Four of them were despatched silently on their landing, and the fifth, who was a little behind the others, not seeing his companions when he came up, suspected that evil had befallen them, and, landing on a sand-bank, interrogated the war-party across the stream. While his attention was engaged by the conversation that ensued, two

of his foes carried a canoe through the willows to the other side of a point higher up the stream, and, having embarked, drifted leisurely down the river, as if they belonged to another party. On approaching the sand-bank, they called to the Teytse-kutchi man, that they were going further down, and would be glad of his company. He waited till they came up, and as he was stepping into his canoe, one of the Kutcha-kutchi tripped him up, and the other stabbed him to the heart as he lay. Having accomplished these murderous feats, the war-party resumed their voyage, but meeting afterwards only with numerous bodies of the Teytse-kutchi, they concealed their evil intentions, and returned to their own lands.

Mr. Thomas Simpson, in his "Narrative of Discoveries in the Polar Sea," relates an instance of the Peel River Kutchin demanding blood-money from the Eskimos, and receiving it for several years, for one of their countrymen, whom they asserted had died of wounds received in a contest between the two nations. The Eskimos having at length discovered that the man for whose death they had been paying was still living, reviled the Kutchin for their falsehood and extortion, and then took their revenge by killing three of the party who had come to demand the compensation for the following year.