PALEOLITHIC RACES 35 



case where a different result might have been expected may be 

 cited from Rink. He writes : — 



" On approaching these places [Ny Herrnhut and Lichtenfels] 

 the visitor, on being told that each of them contains about a 

 hundred natives and two or three missionary families, will be 

 at a loss to make out where the former have their abodes. 

 The mission lodges are pretty spacious, and for Greenland 

 even stately in appearance. The stranger will probably be 

 surprised on being informed that these buildings are only 

 inhabited by missionaries, because he discovers nothing like 

 human dwellings anywhere else. Then his attention will be 

 called to something resembling dunghills scattered over low 

 rocks and partly overgrown with grass, and he will be sur- 

 prised to learn that the native population live in these dens." 1 

 At one time these people had good winter houses. 



The number of Eskimo is diminishing, especially in Green- 

 land, and if the race should become extinct, the country will 

 remain uninhabited, for white men alone could not live there. 



Detailed descriptions of the implements, weapons, and mis- 

 cellaneous possessions of the Eskimo may be found in the 

 Annual Reports of the Bureau of Ethnology, published in 

 Washington : a brief enumeration will suffice for our purpose. 

 The kayak, umiak, salmon-fork, bird spear, spear-thrower, bow 

 and arrow, bird bolas, and skin tent are chiefly used in 

 summer ; dog sledges, harpoons, spears, winter houses, and 

 blubber lamps during the winter ; besides these there are bow 

 drills, arrow straighteners, needles and needle-cases, bone pins, 

 tool-bags with bone handles, buckles, belt fasteners, snow picks, 

 hair combs, and a vast variety of other miscellaneous objects. 



The adjacent Indians possess the birch-bark canoe in two 

 forms, a larger corresponding to the Eskimo's umiak, and a 

 smaller corresponding to the kayak, which is sometimes 

 covered in for as much as three-quarters of its length ; snow 

 shoes, sledges for travelling over snow, drawn by women 

 assisted by dogs, the bow and arrow, spear-thrower, ice-chisel, 

 fish-hooks, nets, and fishing-spears : to ensure their recovery 

 the arrows are sometimes attached by a long thread to the 

 bow, and a line held at one end in the hand is sometimes 

 attached to the fishing-spear. In some cases, indeed, as among 

 the Ojibways and Shoshones, a rudimentary harpoon was 



1 H. Rink, Danish Greenland, London, 1877, p. 181. 



