have a tradition that, many years ago, long before the whites settled among them, a vessel laden with wax, and apparently a Japanese junk, was wrecked on their coast. To this day pieces of the wax are tossed up, and at one time the Hudson Bay Company used to trade it

from the natives. Very recently a similar case was recorded in the newspapers; but the above will suffice to show that there are no obstacles to prevent America having been originally peopled from the Asiatic coast. The number of tribes on the American continent is very remarkable, and the languages are equally multifarious, though all of the general "agglutinate" construction. The famous Thomas Jefferson, President of the United States, was in the habit of pointing to this diversity of languages as a proof of the antiquity of the American aboriginal

race. It points, however, to nothing more than that the native races of America have been always at war with each other, and confined therefore to isolated communities, holding little mutual intercourse with each other, and thus the languages have got further and further separated from each other. In giving a general sketch of the American races, we may throw them into great groups, of a more or less geographical character, the habits and, in most cases, the origin of the tribes being similar in these regions.

Here is a very distinct family of the Americans, that extends across the whole northern coast of the American continent, from Behring Strait on the one side to Greenland on the other, coming as far south as Labrador on the Atlantic and the Yukon River on the Pacific sea-board, but throughout all this large area remaining a very distinct and characteristic people, not differing very widely either in habits or language. The Laps and Samoyedes of the European coast,

Commonly spelled Esquimaux, and pronounced Esquimaw or Esquimow; but I prefer to adopt the Danish orthography, which is now followed by the best writers. The English whaling sailors in Baffin's Bay call them "Yaks," and the Hudson Bay men, "Huskies." What is the origin of the first word I cannot say, but the latter seems only a corruption of Esquimaux; which, again, is said to mean "Flesh-eaters." They call themselves "Inniut," or "the people"-in general.

though in some respects approximating to them, are yet of a different race; while the Tchuktchis, on the Asiatic shores, though adopting many of their habits, are probably an alien people who have taken possession of a country once inhabited by the Eskimo, and either replaced or commingled with that people. They are limited to the unwooded shores of the Arctic Sea, rarely going far into the country, and having their proper home on the to us-most desolate, cold, and forbidding part of the continent. An exploring or other Arctic-going ship will "hook on to the ice-floe" in some quiet bay, as silent and as dreary as ever the eye of man rested on. Snow is all around, snow is falling fast, the very eye gets chilled with the sight, even the water-birds, gorged with blubber, sit in meditative rows on the edge of a piece of floating ice-it seems a world "unfinished from the hands of the Creator." As we pace the snow-covered deck, alternately gazing on the snowcovered, glacier-intersected land, and the snow-laden, frozen sails and shrouds, we are startled by a clear sound through the still Arctic air. We listen; surely it cannot be the sound of man; surely no man lives in this hope-forsaken place. Again! It is the sound of no sea-bird-the cry of no polar bear; it must be the echo of men's voices. The snow has ceased for a moment and the sun has peered out from behind the leaden clouds, and afar off, on the white ice-floe connecting the land and our vessel, we see some black specks. As the specks approach nearer we can make them out to be dog-sledges, filled with little fur-clad people; and in another place are numbers of skin-canoes, looking like large black dogs in the water, paddling through an open "lane" in the ice. Soon, with shouts of gladness, and the howling of their motley dogteams, they are alongside-men, women, and children—and standing, wild-looking denizens of the ice and snow, hailing every one with cries of "Timoo! Timoo!" (good cheer, good cheer). These are the Eskimo, the most northerly family of the human race, as well as of the American subdivision of it. That they are Americans there can, I conceive, be but little doubt. Certainly on the eastern shores they differ widely from the Indians, but as you approach the Pacific coast they imperceptibly inosculate the one into the other in language, and even habits and customs. When, in 1863, I first saw the Indians of the north-west coast of America they seemed old friends of mine; and having only two years before passed a summer among the Eskimo of the western shores of Davis Strait, I was struck with their remarkable resemblance to the heavy-faced-looking people who lined the road from Esquimault to Victoria. In personal appearance they are far from repulsive, though not handsome. In height they may be, on an average, about five feet six inches; but tall men are now and then seen amongst them, and the notion that they are very small arises more from the style of their dress than from any real deficiency in stature. Their faces are fat, egg-shaped, and good humoured, with small twinkling, rather sloping eyes, and a flat nose meandering away on either side in an expanse of nostril into fat brown cheeks. Their colour is fairer than that of many of the Indians, but their skin being usually very dirty and smoked, the natural colour can rarely be seen. Their lips do not differ much from those of Europeans, but the cleft of their mouth is usually very wide. Their hair is generally long, black, straight, and coarse, while few of them have any whisker, beard, or moustache, a slight amount of hair on the upper lip and a little on the chin being for the most part the only approach to these which the most hirsute of them possess. Their hands and feet are usually rather small, but their bodies are muscular and broad about the shoulders, yet-as a rule they are not nearly so strong as Europeans, the feats of ordinary sailors striking them as miracles of strength. Their teeth are usually regular and well set, but in middle-aged and old

people worn down-as among the Indians and many other savages-to the gum, on account of the hard or sand-mixed food which their not over-cleanly habits allow them to consume without proper cooking or washing. Grey-haired people are not uncommon, though the Eskimo are not a short-lived people, take them as a whole. I have spoken of their dirty habits, which darken their otherwise not particularly swarthy complexions. To water they have a great dislike. When they wash themselves (which is rarely), a dirty and offensive liquid often supplies the place of the usual toilet requisite. If, however, they wet their feet, they never rest until they change their boots, the cold climate rendering them stiff and the feet icy after their immersion. It is probably the cold climate which gives them such an antipathy to washing. None of them can swim, as the chilly water soon freezes them, and even if they had learned the art, it would render the exercise of it impossible. If the mother wishes the child to look a little more cleanly than the dirt and smoke of an Eskimo hut would naturally allow, she applies her tongue to the infant, and the result is satisfactory-to the infant! In like manner after she has cooked a piece of meat, she licks any sand or dirt off it before handing it to her husband or guest. The men's hair hangs in long dishevelled locks down their backs; while the women's is more artistically dressed, being drawn up to the top of the head, and then tied in a knot, with a bit of reindeer skin or similar material. Some of them allow a plaited lock to hang down at either side of the neck. The dress of the children is only a miniature edition of that of the adults, and is the same for males and females until they are three or four years old, when some slight changes are introduced. The dress of the men and women is very much the same, and though it differs slightly among different tribes, is yet on the whole very similar throughout. The men wear a short jacket made of seal-skin or reindeer fur, with a hood behind-which hood can be drawn over the head and ears, exposing nothing but the face. In the winter season, underneath this jacket-which is put on by drawing it over the head like a shirt-the Eskimo usually wears another with the fur inside, or a shirt made of bird-skins. Their trousers, among the wilder tribes, are also made of seal, bear, or reindeer skin, and usually reach just below the knee, and are made so loose that a pair of boots can go under them, which, with a pair of large, fingerless, skin gloves, complete the dress. The boots are very excellently made of native tanned sealskin, chewed soft by the women, until it is in a condition to be manufactured. The way the "uppers" are crimped, so as to be sewed with sinew thread to the soles, is most ingenious. The soles are also made of seal-skin of a stronger quality. The boots are stuffed with grass, and have a stocking of reindeer or seal skin, with the hair inside. The whole forms an article of wear infinitely superior to anything of European make. Indeed, Europeans, if they have occasion to travel among the Eskimo, soon cast off their clumsy, inflexible boots, and adopt the light, elegant, and warm Eskimo foot-gear. The dress of the women is much the same-only if the woman is a mother her jacket has a large hood behind, in which the baby is carried, its little head, either bare or covered with a cap woven out of the hair of the white Arctic hare, just peeping over its mother's shoulder, or reaching over to partake of nourishment, as the family plod through ice and snow on the weary march from one hunting-ground to another. The trousers of the women are generally shorter and tighter than those of the men, and the boots are made of sealskin tanned white, and with wide tops stretching high over the knees. These wide tops afford excellent pockets, or hiding-places, for any unconsidered article they may come across. Finally, the woman's jacket has a tail behind, like the tail

of an evening coat, which is, however, in general tucked up to keep it from trailing on the ground. The dress differs in some slight particulars in various districts, and is generally more ornamented than that of the men, with more of rude feather embroidery. Their dress, like their tools, canoes, &c., all show great skill and neatness of hand-excelling in this respect even those of their neighbours and mortal enemies, the Indians. Most of the savage tribes tattoo themselves on the face, but this custom-contrary to the statements in most books-is not now practised among the semi-civilised Greenland Eskimo, though in former times it was. The pattern simply consisted of blue lines, produced by drawing a needle and sinew thread smeared with lampblack under the skin; but every tribe has its own mode of tattooing. To the west of the Mackenzie, the men cut a hole in their lower lip, near the corner of the mouth, which they fill with a labret of bone, stone, or metal. Sir John Richardson informs us that at the mouth of the Mackenzie small green pebbles are obtained, which, when neatly set in wood or brass, are used for this purpose. That late illustrious naturalist and traveller is, however, in error when he considers that the natives of Vancouver Island afford an example of a similar custom; hence he imagined that these people may have adopted the Eskimo habit when, as he supposes, they came to Vancouver Island, and drove out the Eskimo, who once inhabited that coast. The natives of Vancouver Island, as we shall by-and-by see, adopt no such custom; the nearest approach to it being among the Hydahs of Queen Charlotte Island, several hundreds of miles to the northward.

Women

Such, in personal appearance, is the Eskimo, "the strange infidel, the like of whom has neither been seen, read, nor heard tell of," of stout Martin Frobisher. Some of the are handsome; but the old ones are such hags that we need not be surprised at Frobisher's sailors pulling the boots off one to see if her feet were cloven, after the traditional formation of the Evil One! The different species of seal supply nearly everything the Eskimo require in dress, food, summer-houses, implements, &c., and its hunt is one of the chief occupations of their life and thoughts. Their bow is generally made of three pieces of the reindeer's rib, and with its twisted string of sinew and strengthening behind, is a very powerful weapon; knives they manufacture from the copper obtained from the Coppermine River, from flint, from ivory, from any stray pieces of iron which they may come across, or, as I am informed by Professor Stenstrup, in former times, from the meteoric iron found in that country. Wood is very scarce with them, being traded from long distances, or coming as drift-wood, which the currents carry from wooded coasts into the heart of the Arctic Sea. Among some tribes so scarce is it that a harpoonhandle will be made of the valuable ivory "horns" or teeth of the narwhal, or sea-unicorn, or of several bits of wood carefully spliced together. Sir Robert Maclure found one tribe so short of wood that the "runners" of their sledges were made of several salmon tied up and hard frozen ! No more acceptable present can be given to an Eskimo than a broken oar, or any other bit of wood. A common name amongst them is "Kresuk” (drift-wood), a fact pointing to the estimation in which this material is held amongst them. Their spears, harpoons, arrows, &c., are all admirably made, and constructed on most ingenious plans. One of them--the bird-spear--has a main point, but it has also several supplementary points projecting from either side, so that if they should miss the bird with the main point, the chances are that it will be struck by one of the supplementary ones; an inflated bladder attached to the spear keeps it from sinking. The harpoon with which they strike the seal, white whale, whale, narwhal, walrus and other marine animals, is