54 H. P. STEENSBY. 
rapidity with which cultural development and racial propagation can 
take place with the many times slower speed with which alterations 
occur in the earth's history, one may surely draw the conclusion that 
great alterations cannot have taken place in the climatic or geo- 
graphical conditions since the days when the Eskimo began their 
migrations, and any eventual, periodical oscillation of some metres in 
the level of the land or of some degrees in temperature would play 
no encroaching röle. 
According to Rink, the Eskimo originally were an inland people, 
and lived by fishing in the rivers, and he founds his opinion on 
Lewis H. MorGan’s comments on the mode of living of the primitive 
Americans. For the rest, this author regarded the Eskimo as having 
immigrated from Asia. RINK next imagines that either by expulsion 
or a general shifting from the interior the Eskimo were forced out to 
the sea-coast, where, in accord with their former custom, they supported 
life by fishing and hunting, until, little by little, the peculiar Eskimo 
culture fashioned itself. Not until it had adjusted itself to conditions 
of life at the coast did a tribe begin to disperse along the Arctic 
coasts. 
Per se, Rink considers that this development into inhabitants of 
the coasts at the mouth of a river might just as well happen in Asia, 
where there also are rivers which abound in fish and debouch into 
the Arctic Ocean, as in America; but on account of the shape of 
the head, the language, the legends and various cultural conditions 
of the Eskimo, he was convinced, however, that it had happened in 
America. 
RINK was inclined to favour the idea of expulsion from the 
interior by a hostile tribe, as he could not otherwise explain what 
could induce the Eskimo to undertake such a radical change in their 
culture, which can only be thought of as being carried into effect by 
cultural supplies from without, or by the influence of changed natural 
surroundings. As the first possibility, in this case, is quite incon- 
ceivable, one must fall back on the latter, and it must have been a 
powerful and encroaching alteration which took place, since it has 
been able to compel a slow and primitive people like the Eskimo, 
itself to transform its culture so thoroughly in all directions. ‘When 
one considers the often mentioned stagnation, or extremely slight 
change in the conditions of culture, which the Eskimo have been 
subjected to during the period of about 1000 years since the Euro- 
peans have begun to know of them, it is obvious that quite special 
circumstances must have egged them on to activity at the time when 
they trained themselves to be what they now are.” ! Rink believed, 
however, that when he got the Eskimo chased away to the mouth of 
RINK LV, p. 210 
