116 J. C. SCHULTZ ON THE 



does not, except in height, vary mueli, from where the Norse discoverers first saw them, to 

 their extreme western limit in Siberia; at a distance, when clad in their winter dress, they 

 look the best fed people in the world, which idea their fat faces and rowly powly figures 

 does not dispel on a nearer view, their dress making them look shorter and broader than 

 they really are. Stripped of their vestments, however, they show figures possessed of much 

 agility, and except that nearly all are pot-bellied, they are of very fair proportions. In some 

 parts, near the centre of the vast coast line ihey inhabit, the men reach five feet nine, ten 

 and even eleven inches in height, but near their eastern and western limit, six inches below 

 these heights would be the general limit. Although, to resist arctic cold the muscles have 

 an adipose covering greater than that of other Indians and whites, yet in their muscular 

 development, in the direction which their labours or recreations necessitate, they are the 

 equals of the average white and superior to many of the Indian tribes. Expert and endur- 

 ing wrestlers and paddlers, they are yet poor walkers and lifters of heavy weights, and 

 owing to their precarious food supply, dripping houses and the bad weather of the climatic 

 interregnum between winter and spring, they are short lived, and the men more so than the 

 women, owing to casualties attendant upon their difficult and dangerous summer method of 

 taking the seal. 



Everywhere they are found the facial expression is the same : broad and flat, with a 

 nose so low that various explorers have laid a straight edge across the cheeks of an arctic 

 belle without touching it, while across the u[iper part of it the skin was stretched as tightly 

 as a drum. The eye is small and black and, particularly in the women, the lower lid points 

 downward like the Chinese, giving the face a peculiar expression. The skin, when divested 

 of its aggregation of fat and lamp soot, is lighter than that of the sub-arctic Indian tribes, 

 and the bodies of their children at birth are nearly as white as those of Europeans. Their 

 hands and feet are small and delicately shaped, the hair black and coarse, and like the 

 Indians south of them, they carefully extract the few straggling hairs from chin and 

 face. 



The dress of the Eskimo, unlike the defective covering of other savages, is unique in 

 its appearance as it is in its perfectness of adaptation to their wants, their climate and 

 occupations admitting nothing but the lightest, warmest and driest of coverings. These 

 ends they have accomplished with a degree of perfection and skill, which would rank them 

 superior among savages, even if we had not, in addition, their rare adaptation of limited 

 means to an end, in their weapons, houses and canoes. The outer portion of the garments 

 of both sexes is much the same, the skirts of the smock-shaped outer coat worn by the 

 women being longer and more peaked than that of the men ; the hood is also larger, for 

 the accommodation of the inevitable baby, and the boots much wider. The upper garments 

 in winter ai'e chiefly of the skins of the reindeer, tanned with the hair on, and these are 

 doubletl so that the hair touches the skin, and is as well, the outer covering, the skin of tlie 

 seal being employed for their waterproot boots, which are also doubled, with the additional 

 warmth of soft slippers for the feet intervening. The dress, especially of tlie women, is 

 often ornamented with fringes of down or strips of light coloured skins, making a pleasing 

 contrast to the rich, dark colour of their clothing. The dress described is that made by 

 them with bone needles and thread of sinew. Contact with Europeans has brought them 

 steel needles and ordinary thread, but no increase of comfort or of appearance, their clothes 

 being many times warmer and far more suited to their needs than the best of the white 



