INNUITS OF OUR AECTIC COAST. 115 



and others visited and described, and who seem not to have molested Franklin's fated band, 

 and, indeed, aided when they could, other arctic expeditions in time of their direst need, 

 deserve no such treatment at our hands. 



The early voyagers called them " Skraelings ; " the Indians projier (-'Abenaki") of 

 inland southeastern Labrador called them "Eskimo," meaning "raw tish eaters;" the 

 early French voyagers to the gulf, Esquimaux, from the Indian word, and by these latter 

 names they are generally known to-day, their own proud title of " Innuit " — the people — 

 being seldom heard save among themselves. 



It will be in order after their name or names, to describe brietly the country they occupy 

 within and without the Dominion of Canada. Our Canadian Eskimo maybe said to occupy 

 a country about two thousand miles long by eight hundred miles broad, while the "Innuit" 

 nation extends along the Asiatic coast four hundred miles west of Behring Straits, along the 

 northern coast of Alaska, and down the Asiatic and American coasts of Behring Sea for 

 some distance, where, however, they have become mixed with tlie coast Indian tribes, the 

 east and west coast of Greenland, and down the Labrador coast to latitude sixty, occupy- 

 ing also both shores of Hudson's Bay down to about the same latitude. Throughout this 

 vast region they have never shown any inclination to leave the sea-coast of the continent or 

 the islands off" of it, and when they do so, it is merely a summer excursion to supplement 

 their diet of seal, whale, walrus, mussels and sea fish with the flesh of the reindeer and the 

 salmon of districts not far from their favourite arctic haunts, and to procure the reindeer 

 skins to provide the lighter part of the dress of the winter and summer months. The seal 

 is to the Eskimo what the buffalo once was to the Indians of the western prairie ; food, clothing 

 and material for his house. Indeed, it is more, for the fat is his winter fuel and without the 

 seal there would be no Innuit nation, as no savages, less well fed on oleaginous foods, could 

 possibly resist and face, as the Eskimo have to resist and face, the intense cold of an arctic 

 winter : eating quantities of it, as well as of whale's blubber, which we would doubt the 

 tales of were they not vouched for by arctic voyagers and missionaries whose accuracy can- 

 not be impugned ; they tell us that a successful hunter will lie on his back and devour 

 twelve or fourteen pounds of blubber in a day, and an Eskimo boy is described by a pains- 

 taking and doubtless wondering arctic voyager, as eating, in twenty-four hours, eight and 

 a-half pounds of seal meat, half frozen and half cooked, one pound two ounces of bread, one 

 pint and a-half of thick soup, and washing all this down with three wine-glassfuls of 

 schnapps, a tumbler of grog and tive pints of water. To use an old expression " All seems 

 fish that comes to their net," and the arctic fox, hare, wolf and leeming are used as food, 

 cooked slightly, if where drift wood or twigs can be found, or frozen or half putrid if a 

 little train oil may be had as a sauce for these rather " high " dainties. 



In their extensive habitat the physical conditions do not vary much ; in nearly all cases 

 they are far beyond the tree line of the continent, and while, no doubt, the extensive depos- 

 its of driftwood brought to the icy sea by the rivers of Siberia, and our own great 

 Mackenzie supply them in some parts with the coveted lance handles and sled runners 

 summer fuel and material for their houses, yet these drifts seldom occur where other 

 conditions are favourable to a full food supply, and as the seal is his principal food, furnishing 

 him as well with light, warmth, clothing, implements of the chase, harness for his dogs, 

 material for his canoe and his summer as well as part of his winter house, all other consid- 

 erations give way before it. The appearance of the Eskimo along their extensive coast line 



