close to Cape York, but without landing. The natives assembled on the ice-floe, men and women, standing on their heads, tumbling, jumping, and shouting, apparently with a view to induce us to land and trade; for the Greenlanders north of the glaciers of Melville Bay, unlike all the other Eskimos have no kayaks or omiaks. Some authors have described them as wonderfully honest. Under the Danish rule they certainly are, but that is no criterion. In their savage state those who know them best describe them as innately thieves, long before they became familiar with white men, and I was assured by the captain. of the first whaler which ever crossed Baffin's Bay after Sir John Ross, when the Pond's Bay and Lancaster Sound natives were in a state of pristine savagedom, that the first thing they did was to attempt to steal the blacksmith's anvil, failing in which they managed to get off scot-free with his hammer. Perhaps it would have been a miracle if they had not attempted to secure what was, in their eyes, of priceless value. White men, without half the temptation, have been known to do acts rather more heinous than that. They are highly talented liars, but so little reticent are they that if they are only allowed to chatter on, a fair average amount of truth will ooze out in spite of themselves. They quarrel but little amongst themselves, but are said to be revengeful, and to wait long to get a safe opportunity to gratify their spite upon an enemy, cutting his awatuk or blown-up seal-skin, making a hole in his kayak, drowning his dogs, or, if the offence is heinous, harpooning his enemy as he sits with his back towards him in the kayak. Women are treated with indifference, but not with cruelty, and have a say-much too great a say all travellers will allow-in every bargain. The children are petted in every way, and impudent mannikins they are. Having occasion to visit an Eskimo hut on the western shores of Davis Strait, when the younger members of the family were being "put to bed," I was amused to see how it was done. The youngster, after eating a piece of blubbery seal big enough for an ordinary-sized man's dinner, and being suckled as they are until about four years old-was popped, naked, into a seal-skin bag filled. with feathers, a cap made of the white hare's fur put on to its head, the mouth of the bag drawn, and the whole deposited in a corner out of the way. Polygamy is permitted, but is not common. They are betrothed at an early age, and married when the youthful husband is capable of supporting a family, an event which generally happens when they are young, as they soon begin to learn the business of their life-viz., hunting seals. At one time, in Greenland, it was the fashion for the husband to make a show of stealing his wife, her relatives coming in hot pursuit, and the lady a willing victim. At no time, I believe, was marriage a case of purchase, as among other barbarous people. They bury their dead by wrapping them in seal-skin, and heaping stones on them in some out-of-the-way place. Along with the body they bury the lamp, knife, &c., and even the children's toys (the men, their peculiar tools, and the women theirs). Old graves are accordingly favourite places for finding antique implements. Among the Eskimo on the western shores of Davis Strait the relatives will flee the house when a person is dying; the reason of this being that if they remain inside the house until death occurs, the clothes they have on will have to be forfeited. They are, however, very indifferent to the body after death, for though they build stones above the grave, they never repair it after being injured, and are seemingly careless whether dogs or wolves devour the body. An instance is related in which a man bewailed the death of his child, and immediately after made a hearty meal, using the dead body of the child as a table! yet when they pass a grave they will throw a piece of meat upon it.

Such are the iron race of. the Eskimo-a race interesting in many respects from the peculiar character of their home, and for the bold struggle they have to maintain against ice, snow, and terrible cold. Civilisation has only reached them at certain places on the Atlantic side of America. In Labrador the Moravians have succeeded in introducing religion and civilisation among them with marked success, while further north the American and English whalers have introduced civilisation of another sort. Vice of every description is now prevalent among the natives of the western shores of Davis Strait, and as on that coast the population has always been scanty, they are now fast decreasing. In Greenland civilisation has been introduced among them for the last 150 years or more, and with marked success. There, thanks to the efforts of the Danish Government, the 9,000 or 10,000 natives under its rule are a civilised, industrious people. North of the Danish possessions a handful of savages live; they cannot be now more than 100 in number, and when Dr. Hayes visited them, they said to him plaintively, "Come back soon, or there will be nobody to welcome you." When Kane first visited them (in Smith's Sound), they were astonished to find that they were not the only people on the earth! On the east coast of Greenland there must be now very few of them left, but as that coast is almost inaccessible, it is impossible to speak with accuracy on this point. The last German expedition only saw traces of their dwellings, but none of themselves.*

CHAPTER II.

THE NORTH-WESTERN AMERICAN INDIANS.

BETWEEN California and the Eskimo line in Alaska there stretches a wide region, more than 1,600 miles in length, and comprehending all the country to the west of the Rocky Mountains. No region on the American continent is more varied in its physical features-wood, mountain, river, lake, prairie, desert, and sea, all alternating or intermingling in a varied vista before the traveller's eye, as he floats down one of the great rivers-Fraser, Columbia, or Sacramento -which intersect it, and bear the melting snows of the Rocky, Cascade, or Sierra Nevada Mountains to the Pacific. Nor are the aboriginal inhabitants less varied in character, habits, and language, though all bearing a general family likeness, which enables us to give a toutensemble of their chief customs and ideas. The wooded country which, with the exception of a few prairies here and there in the Californian valleys, or in the valley of the Willamette River, is of unbroken extent, and very dense, and comprehends the greater portion of the region to the west of the Cascade Mountains, is in general without any inhabitants. To the Indians these dark primeval forests are the home of all things fearful and to be avoided. There they lie, wave after wave of forest and forest-clothed hill, oak and alder and pine, and the bright

The Greenlanders, among whom the writer passed a summer, are an especially interesting people, their present state of semi-barbarous civilisation being so peculiar. Those who are curious on the subject will find an interesting account of them in Dr. Rinks' various works, particularly his "Evyntyr og Sagn Grönlandske."

autumnal yellow-leaved maple, full of bear and of beaver and of elk, and, if the scared Indian hunter is to be credited, worse things still-Cyclopean Smolenkos, one-eyed jointless fiends,

who run along the mountain-sides swifter than the black-tailed deer-Pans, and dryads, and hamadryads, gods of the woods and the groves and of the waterfalls and the running streams; all these haunt the country out of sight of the salt water, for (evidence uncontrovertible!) had not Kēkeān's father's brother's friend seen them when he was seeking his medicine, or

Maquilla's grandfather's cousin, Wiccaninish, heard a hunter of elk tell it to the wondering lodge at Kalooish's great salmon feast at Shesha? "Laugh as you like, chief of King George, "an Indian once said to me, when pressing him to join me in exploring a portion of the great forest," but as long as there are salmon in Stalow and deer in Swuchas, you will not get me to go with you there!"

In the open country, where there exist grass and water in any abundance (and this is almost entirely to the east of the Cascade Range), there are many tribes, with numerous horses, though these people are now greatly decreasing. These "horse tribes" are the finest and most manly of the aboriginal races of the North-west, and are variously divided into Shoshones or Snakes, Cyuse, Nez Percez (or pierced nose), Okinagens, Flatbows, &c., all members of one great family. They chiefly subsist by hunting deer and antelope, occasionally crossing the Rocky Mountains to pursue the buffalo on the plains lying east of that range, since that animal has now entirely deserted the Pacific slope. They are very warlike, and have all, at various times, been at war with the United States. At present most of them carry on depredations on the whites, whenever they have a favourable opportunity, and at best are only at "armed neutrality" with their now more powerful pale-faced neighbours. In the more desert country, like that of South-eastern Oregon, and to the east of the Sierra Nevada, in California, and the State of Nevada, or in the remoter valleys among the mountains, live the various petty tribes of "Digger Indians," a miserable race, who derive their familiar name from the fact of their subsisting on roots, grubs, or any other garbage which they can pick up. They are probably the most degraded of all the American races, and have been driven from the more fertile plains in these desert places and mountain fastnesses by the warlike horse tribes. Most of the Californian Indians belong to this type. They are much darker than the rest of the North-west tribes. Along the banks of all the great rivers are numerous small tribes, who subsist almost entirely by fishing, and drying the enormous quantities of salmon which are found in all the streams of any size in this region. Along the coasts, at nearly every available place, numerous small septs of fishing tribes are met with, who never go far out of sight of their village, devoting themselves exclusively to fishing and collecting berries and other wild fruits, and almost continually at war with each other.

Such are the tribes which inhabit the coasts of Vancouver Island and British Columbia, in almost every inlet or quiet bay of which a board or mat village of these people smokes. The Indians in California, Oregon, Washington, and other American territories have now lost nearly all their former freedom, and much of their original habits and character, being now for the greater part gathered by the United States Government on "reservations" of land away from the white settlements, under the care of agents. How this system has operated we shall inquire in a future chapter. In the meantime we may say, without fear of contradiction, that these tribes are greatly on the decrease, and will eventually, perhaps in a few years, disappear. War, disease, general mismanagement, and persecution are the leading causes for this state of things. In the British possessions the natives still live, to a great extent, in their primitive state, and, except in the vicinity of settlements, have to a greater degree retained their primitive condition and habits. In California and the States north of it I question if there are now over 10,000 or 12,000 Indians; while in the British possessions the number may be about 30,000. In Vancouver Island alone the

aboriginal population is about 10,000; altogether, on the whole Pacific slope, the number of natives may be estimated at not much over 60,000. All these tribes are nominally independent of each other, and though bearing distinct names, are often little more than separate villages or communities of the same tribe, and speaking a dialect of the same language, though all mutually hating and often at war with each other. The number of separate languages and dialects spoken in these wide regions is almost incredible; indeed it has been variously estimated at from forty upwards. In Vancouver Island alone there are four distinct languages spoken, and in British Columbia probably six or seven more. In habits, customs, and character there is a considerable difference in all these numerous tribes, the names of the chief of which we have already enumerated. Yet generally there is a great family likeness between them all, and in many of their customs a great similarity. This enables us, therefore, to direct our attention more especially to some of their more marked features and traits of life, taking the coast tribes of the North as the basis round which we will weave our sketches.

Ulloa, however, made a great error when he said, "See one Indian, and you have seen all." The word Indian comprehends many tribes-almost nations-different in personal appearance, character, capabilities, language, customs, and religion, so that though they may all have a prevailing tout-ensemble, yet it is impossible to present in brief a general description of the race. In the "Far West" and on the shores of the North Pacific, the different tribes also differ widely-indeed, almost as broadly as do the whites from the Indians themselves. The natives of California and the east of the Sierra desert are, as we have already seen, the most miserable race on the American continent a dark, wretched, degraded set of beings-living upon garbage of every sort, and crouching in almost inaccessible places in the mountain fastnesses, for protection against the powerful tribes of their own race surrounding them, and whose oppression may possibly, in remote times, have led to their present condition. Most of the coast tribes up to 54° north latitude, including those of Vancouver Island, and on the lower reaches of the Columbia and the Fraser, are a degraded race, dirty in person, though vastly superior to the "Diggers" already described; and though handsome men and women are far from uncommon among them, yet from their taking little active exercise, and crouching continually in canoes in fishing and travelling from place to place, their lower limbs are attenuated, and contrast but strangely with their muscular arms and chests, and well-fed, swarthy appearance generally. In addition, these coast tribes, and a few of the interior ones, having adopted the very peculiar custom of flattening their foreheads, they cannot compare, generally speaking, with the more Northern tribes who have not adopted this outre improvement upon nature. Again, on the other hand, no sooner do you leave Bentinck Arm than a race differing very greatly from those south of them appear-a manly, tall, handsome people, and comparatively fair in their complexion. Such are the Tsimpheans, Hydahs (or Queen Charlotte Islanders), the Tongass, Stekins, &c.-in fact, all the tribes of Russian America (Alaska), and the northern shores of British Columbia. I will venture to say that finer-looking men than some of the Queen Charlotte Islanders and other tribes mentioned it would be impossible to find, and the

* "Mémoires Philosophiques, Historiques, Physiques, concernant la Découverte de l'Amérique," &c. (Traduit par M.; Paris, 1787).