or Western side of the American continent, or liie Eastern of 

 the Asiatic (Siberia) , and we had to suppose that the shores 

 traversed before reaching the arctic frontier had been found to 

 be uninhabited. It must be presumed that the acch'matisation 

 and adaptation of the newcomers to this arctic home extended 

 over centuries before any generally wide spread diffusion could 

 have taken place throughout the arctic regions. During such a 

 period the population must have necessarily multiplied and in- 

 creased towards the said frontier. An assemblage, or accumul- 

 ation, of this nature on the sea shore itself barely agrees with 

 their habits of subsistance by fishing and hunting. For like 

 reasons we cannot imagine that, if they had come from the 

 interior they could have wandered across the land, and not 

 followed the river courses. The latter path would lead them 

 naturally to a country bordering the sea and including the 

 estuaries of rivers which, from their abundance of fish, supplied 

 the necessary food for sustaining life during the supposed 

 period of transition. 



THE LANGUAGE OF THE ARCTIC SETTLERS NEEDING 

 THE FORMATION AND ADDITION OF NEW WORDS. It can 



hardly be denied that the explanation thus offered is supported 

 by various facts, but on the other hand we have to bear in 

 mind that still we have been conflned in the main to bare 

 theory, and the writer has searched diligently for some source 

 of information on which to base more exact conclusions. Such 

 he believes to have found while prosecuting the study of the 

 Eskimo dialects, and thereby adopting a proceeding which will 

 be found quite simple. On first settling by the arctic waters 

 and adopting an altered mode of existence, the newcomers must 

 have been compelled to create a number of new words where- 

 with to designate or describe the objects of their natural sur- 

 roundings, especially the animals which they met with here for 

 the first time, and those contrivances and engines which neces- 



