ON THE ESQUIMAUX 183 



scribes the Skraellings as " black and ill-favoured, 

 with coarse hair on their heads, and large eyes, with 

 broad cheeks." Cartwright, writing in 1790, says 

 they were quarrelsome among one another, and 

 occasionally thievish. Cranz, in 1760, says they 

 were degraded, immoral, and brutish in their heathen 

 state. Nansen thinks they led an ideal socialistic 

 life, but founded, I think, rather on a basis of inevi- 

 table union against starvation in bad times than on 

 a basis of Divine and brotherly love. They appear 

 ever to have been simple and confiding. Karlsefne 

 says they came to visit his men in Vinland and 

 began to barter. 



"These people would rather have red cloth than 

 anything else ; for this they gave skins and real 

 furs. For an entire fur-skin the Skraellings took a 

 piece of red cloth a span long, and bound it round 

 their heads. Thus went on traffic for a time, then 

 the cloth began to fall short among Karlsefne and 

 his people, and they cut it asunder into small 

 pieces, which were not wider than the breadth of a 

 finger, and still the Skraellings gave just as much 

 as before, and more.' 1 



According to our code they are very immoral, yet 

 seeing the conduct of white men to one another and 

 to themselves they always say of a good man, " He 

 is like an Innuit " (Eskimo). They themselves have 

 no words for cursing, and Nansen says also no 

 words of opprobrium, such as liar, scoundrel, or 

 rowdy. Recently one in the far north of Labrador, 



