FACULTY IN ABOEIGINAL RACES. 79 ' 



bald Grothic structures, such as St. Machar's cathedral on the Dee, where the builders 

 were limited to grauite ; while contemporary architecture in localities where good sand- 

 stone or limestone abounds is rich in elaborate details ; and where the soft and easily 

 wrought Caen stone is available, runs to excess in the florid exuberance of its carvings. 



The ingenious artist of the Palœolithic Era not only ornamented the hafts of 

 his tools and weapons with representations of familiar objects of the chase ; but also, 

 as has been already noted, is accredited with carving, on his mace or baton, symbolic 

 emblems expressing the rank and official duties of the owner. The analogous prac- 

 tice of the Haidas of the Queen Charlotte Islands at the present day shows that 

 there is nothing inconsistent with primitive thought in the symbolic significance 

 assigned to some of the carved batons ; and, if so, we have there examples of imita- 

 tive art emploj^ed in a way which involved the germ of ideographic graving or picture- 

 writing. The mere fact of pictorial imitation implies the interpretation of its repre- 

 resentations. Eskimo implements are to be seen in various collections, as at Copenhagen 

 and Stockholm, in the British Museum, at San Francisco, and in the Smithsonian 

 Institution at Washington, ornamented with representations of adventures incident to their 

 habits of life. An Arctic collection presented by Captain Beechey to the Ashmoleau 

 Museum, at Oxford, furnishes interesting illustrations of the skill of the Eskimo draftsman. 

 The carvings and linear drawings represent, for the most part, incidents in the life of the 

 polar hunter ; and this is so effectively done that, as Captain Beechey says : " By compar- 

 ing one with another, a little history was obtained which gave us a better insight into 

 their habits than could be elicited from any signs or intimations." ' Mr. W. H. Dall 

 figures in his " Alaska and its Resources," analogous examples of Innuit or Western Eskimo 

 art ; and in an interesting communication by Dr. J. W. Hoffman to the Anthropological 

 Society of Washington, on Eskimo pictographs as compared with those of other American 

 aborigines, he figures and interprets similar examples." One of these, copied from an ivory 

 bow used in making fire, which he examined in the Museum of the Alaska Commercial 

 Company of San Francisco, depicts three incidents in the Innuit hunter's experience. 

 In one, the hunter supplicates the Shaman, or native medicine-man, for success in the 

 chase ; another group represents the results of the chase ; while the third records the 

 incidents of an unsuccessful appeal to another shaman. Another graving from the 

 same locality embodies the incidents of success and failure in a prolonged hunting 

 expedition. In their interpretation. Dr. Hoffman was assisted by a Kadiack half-breed 

 who happened to visit San Francisco at the time. A design of the same class cojiied from 

 a piece of walrus ivory, carved by a Kiatégamut Indian of southern Alaska, records a 

 successful feat of the shaman in curing two patients. He is represented in the act of 

 exorcising the demons, who are seen just cast out from the men restored to health by 

 his agency. From the interpretations thus given, it may be inferred that such drawings 

 as those described by Captain Beechey represent in nearly every case actual incidents. 

 The hunter celebrates his return from a successful chase, his experience in the attempt to 

 propitiate the supernatural powers on his behalf, or any other notable event, by recording 

 the impressive incidents on the handle of his hunting knife or his ivory bow, or even in 

 some cases on a tablet of walri^s ivory ; just as the enthusiastic sportsman will at times 



' Narrative of a Voyage to the Pacific, i. 241. ^ Trans. Anthropol. Soc. Washington, ii. 140. 



