WELCOME FROM ESKIMOS 49 



present danger of starvation for a family, or even an 

 entire village. 



There is a theory, first advanced by Sir Clements 

 Markham, ex-president of the Royal Geographical So- 

 ciety of London, that the Eskimos are the remnants of 

 an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon ; that the last mem- 

 bers of this tribe were driven out on the Arctic Ocean 

 by the fierce waves of Tartar invasion in the Middle 

 Ages, and that they found their way to the New Sibe- 

 rian Islands, thence eastward over lands yet undis- 

 covered to Grinnell Land and Greenland. I am inclined 

 to believe in the truth of this theory for the following 

 reasons : 



Some of the Eskimos are of a distinctly Mongolian 

 type, and they display many Oriental characteristics, 

 such as mimicry, ingenuity, and patience in mechanical 

 duplication. There is a strong resemblance between 

 their stone houses and the ruins of the houses found in 

 Siberia. The Eskimo girl brought home by Mrs. Peary, 

 in 1894, was mistaken by Chinamen for one of their 

 own people. It has also been suggested that their 

 invocation of the spirits of their dead may be a survival 

 of Asian ancestor worship. 



As a general rule the Eskimos are short in stature, 

 as are the Chinese and Japanese, though I could name 

 several men who stand about five feet ten inches. The 

 women are short and plump. They all have powerful 

 torsos, but their legs are rather slender. The muscular 

 development of the men is astonishing, though their 

 fatty roundness hides the differentiation of the muscles. 



These people have no written speech, and their 

 language is agglutinative, with complicated prefixes and 



