7 INTRODUCTION TO THE 



Carolines, are to be traced to the same common 

 source, with those of the islands visited by our ships.^ 

 With the like view, of exhibiting a striking picture of 

 the amazing extent of this oriental language, which 

 marks, if not a common original, at least an intimate 

 intercourse between the inhabitants of places so very 

 remote from each other, he has inserted a compara- 

 tive table of their numerals, upon a more enlarged 

 plan than any that has hitherto been executed. * 



Our British discoverers have not only thrown a 

 blaze of light on the migrations of the tribe which 

 lias so wonderfully spread itself throughout the 

 islands in the Eastern Ocean; but they have also 

 favoured us with much curious information concern- 

 ing another of the families of the earth whose lot 

 has fallen in less hospitable climates. We speak of 

 the Esquimaux, hitherto only found seated on the 

 coasts of Labradore and Hudson's Bay, and who 

 differ in several characteristic marks from the inland 

 inhabitants of North America. That the Green- 

 landers and they agree in every circumstance of 

 customs, and manners, and language, which are de- 

 monstrations of an original identity of nation, had 

 been discovered about twenty years ago. t Mr. 

 Hearne, in 1?72, traced this unhappy race farther 

 back, toward that part of the globe from whence 

 they had originally coasted along in their skin boats, 

 having met with some of them at the mouth of the 

 Coppermine River, in the latitude of 72, and near 

 rive hundred leagues farther W. than PickersghTs 



* We are indebted to Sir Joseph Banks, for a general outline of 

 this, in Hawkesworth's Collection, vol. iii. p-. 777. The reader 

 will find our enlarged Table at the end of the third volume, Ap- 

 pendix, No. 2. 



f See Crantz's History of Greenland, vol. i. p. 262.; where we 

 are told that the Moravian Brethren, who, with the consent and 

 furtherance of Sir Hugh Palliser, then Governor of Newfoundland, 

 visited the Esquimaux on the Labradore coast, found that their 

 language, and that of the Greenlanders, do not differ so much as 

 that of the High and Low Dutch. 



