Aboriginal Race of America. 163 
in aquatic exercises. The Esquimaux, notwithstanding the 
intense cold of his climate, has been called an amphibious 
animal, so readily and equally does he adapt himself to the 
land or water. His boat is an evidence of mechanical skill; 
and the adroit manner in which he manages it is a pro- 
verb among mariners. The women are not less expert and 
enterprising than the men: each possesses a boat of pecu- 
liar and distinctive construction; and Crantz informs us, 
that children of the tender age of seven or eight years com- 
mence the unassisted management of their own little 
vessels. 
How strongly do these and other traits which might be 
enumerated, contrast with those of the Indian, and enforce 
an ethnographic dissimilarity which is confirmed at every step 
of the investigation ! 
Some writers, however, think they detect in the Fuegian 
a being whose similar physical condition has produced in 
him all the characteristics of the Esquimaux ; but we confi- 
dently assert that the latter is vastly superior both in his 
exterior organization and mental aptitude. In truth the 
two may be readily contrasted but not easily compared. 
The Fuegian bears a coarse but striking resemblance to the 
race to which he belongs, and every feature of his character 
assists in fixing his identity. The extremes of cold, with 
their many attending privations, by brutifying the features 
and distorting the expression of the face, reduce man to a 
mere caricature, a repulsive perversion of his original type. 
Compare the Mongols of Central Asia and China with the 
Polar nations of Siberia. Compare also the Hottentot with 
the contiguous black tribes on the north—the Tasmanian 
negro with the proper New Hollander,—and lastly, the 
wretched Fuegian with the Indian beyond the Magellanic 
strait; and we find in every instance how much more the 
man of a cold and inhospitable clime is degraded, physically 
and intellectually, than his more fortunate but affiliated 
- neighbour. The operation of these perverting causes through 
successive ages of time, has obscured but not obliterated those 
lineaments which, however modified, point to an aboriginal . 
stock. 
