144 Transactions of the Royal Canadian Institute [vol. x. 



A still older one, who wrote at a time when the distance between 

 the two continents had not yet been ascertained, exclaimed in the course 

 of his "Voyages from Asia to America": "This is certain, that the 

 Tschuktschi get Cloaths of Martins Skins from hence [i.e. from America]; 

 some such have now and then been brought from Anadirskoi [an island 

 in the Gulf of Anadyr] to Jakutzk, as is known to every Person there- 

 abouts ".^ 



Lastly, Sir George Simpson, the celebrated Hudson's Bay Company 

 magnate of the first half of the nineteenth century, tells us that the 

 object of a certain expedition he speaks of "was to occupy the country 

 by posts in order to protect the trade from the Tchuktchi of Siberia, 

 who cross the straits every summer to traffic with the American Indians, 

 carrying their furs, ivory, etc., to the fair of Ostrovnoye".^ 



Just think of it! The commercial relations between the natives of 

 Asia and America so frequent that they disturb the equanimity of such 

 powerful traders as the Hudson's Bay Company people! 



And no wonder. For it stands to reason that, especially among 

 primitive and more or less nomadic races, a sheet of water the opposite 

 shores of which can be seen with the naked eye by any one standing 

 on either of them can be no serious impediment to intercourse.^ And 

 if such a passage is commonly effected for the sake of gratifying one's 

 cupidity or whims, it is at least as possible in cases of personal or national 

 necessity. 



And yet we hear a writer of the weight of Dr. H. Rink, the fore- 

 most Protestant missionary to the Eastern Eskimos, declare in no un- 

 certain accents that "il est tout-cL-fait impossible que des peuplades 

 disposant exclusivement de pirogues du genre de celles dont font usage 

 les habitants de I'Australie et des iles de la Polyn6sie aient pu faire le 

 trajet d'Asie en Am6rique, h. une latitude aussi bor4ale que Test celle 

 des regions oii les cotes du Nouveau Monde et de I'Ancien sont le plus 

 rapproch6es".^ 



The italics are his, and render his declaration all the more difficult 

 to reconcile with a common sense view of the question. Why, the natives 

 of Australia and Polynesia are provided with canoes of such an enormous 

 size that they undertake therewith long and perilous voyages on the 

 high seas! On the other hand, we read of an incestuous Aleutian who, 

 in the company of his daughter, after "pushing ofT in a baidarka from 



^ S. Muller, "Voyages from Asia to America, p. XXIX. 



^Op. cit., Vol. II, p. 201. 



^ Hooper, "The Tents of the Tuski", p. i68; London, 1853. 



* Compte-rendu Cong, internai. Americanistes, Vol. II, p. 328; Luxembourg, 1878. 



