THE ESKIMO RACE ANB LANGUAGE. 281 



ascertained, or tlie question settled, whether the AkUlinek of the 

 Greenland Eskimo, the yan'ttar/mun of the people of the central 

 regions, and the Nateroik of the Tchiglit of the Mackenzie, refer to 

 specific localities, or are mere figments of the savage imagination. 

 Dr. Rink^ thinks that Akillinek is perhaps the Asiatic side of 

 Behring's Straits, to which ex|)editions from the American shore may 

 have taken place. Murdoch'' compares with the legend of Akillinek, 

 the Pt. Barrow legend of the country of Iglu-Nnna discovered by a 

 man who had lost his way when out sledging. I might here remark 

 that Killinek is still the Eskimo nime for Cape Chudley and the 

 adjacent islands. 



In a paper read before the Institute last year,^ I advanced the view 

 that instead of the Eskimo being derived from the Mongolians of 

 North-Eastern Asia, the latter are on the contrary descended from 

 the Eskimo, or their ancestors, who have from time immemorial 

 inhabited the continent of America. Since then I have been enabled 

 to collect a comparative vocabulary of some 200 words, exhibiting 

 the relationship between the Eskimo dialects and the Turanian lan- 

 guages of Northern Asia and Europe. I am sure the vocabulary could 

 have been greatly extended if I had had moi-e time and more mater- 

 ial to work upon. Still I think that a vocabulary of 200 words will 

 seem a sufficient j ustification for the position I have taken. Together 

 with the list of words will be found some examples of similarity in 

 grammatical structure, between the language-groups considered. The 

 apparent great age of the I'esidence of the so-called " Mongolian " 

 peoples in Asia and in Europe, may at first sight seem adverse to 

 the opinions I have advanced. From language, from crauiology and 

 from archaeology, I have drawn what seem to me reasonable inferences. 

 H. H. Howarth * thinks that " the Finns proper entered Scandinavia 

 in the wake of the Norsemen," and others have remarked that the Finns 

 are among the latest comers from Asia. The true form of the 

 Eskimo skull is dolichocephalic' ; and the dolichocephaly decreases as 

 we proceed from Greenland westwards into Asia. Among the kind- 

 red Tuiaiiian tribes of Asia and Europe, this type has to a consider- 



1. Eskimo Tales and Trad. , p. 29. 



2. Loc. cit., p. 598. 



3. Proc. Can. Inst., 3rd. Ser., vol. v., Fasc. i., Oct. 1887, p. 70. 



4. The Finns, Journ. Anthr. Inst., vol. ii., p. 208. 



5. Rae. Eskimo Skulls, .Journ. Anthr. Inst., Gt. Brit, and Ire., vol. vii. 1879-8, p. 142. 



