CHAPTER XXII. 



ARCTIC AMERICA AND GREENLAND. 



PREVIOUS to the great wave of immigration from Europe which set in soon after the Spanish 

 discovery (for discovery it practically was) and conquest of America, the whole of the inhabited 

 or habitable portions of the New World and Greenland were populated by aboriginal tribes 

 more or less distinct from those found in other regions of the globe, and, for the most 

 part, presenting a remarkable similarity in physical characters to one another. With the 

 exception of the Eskimo of Greenland and Arctic America, which, as is shown below, are 

 markedly distinct from the other races of the New World, all these peoples were by the 

 Spaniards called "Indians" ; and Indians, frequently with the distinctive prefix North or South 

 American, they have ever since remained. Properly of course they, and they alone, have an 

 hereditary claim to be designated Americans; but that title is now assumed by the white 

 inhabitants of the United States, with whom, as with all other settlers of European descent, 

 and also the African Negroes imported into many of the countries of the New World, we are 

 not here concerned. 



That by far the greater portion of the aboriginal population of America was derived from 

 Eastern Asia, and that the migration took place by way of Bering Strait, is now generally 

 admitted by all capable of forming a trustworthy opinion; the migration having taken place 

 at a comparatively remote epoch, when there was probably still a land connection between the 

 eastern extremity of Asia and Alaska. Opinions are, however, still divided as to whether the 

 Eskimo arrived by the same route; an alternative idea being that their ancestors reached 

 the present habitat of the race by a presumed land connection between Europe and Greenland 

 by way of Iceland. If the 

 latter be the true view, the 

 Eskimo must of course have 

 had a very different origin 

 from the typical Indians of 

 North America; and it has 

 been sought to trace their 

 ancestry to the early inhabi- 

 tants of North-western Europe. 

 Sir William Flower is, how- 

 ever, very strongly of opinion 

 that the Eskimo form "a 

 branch of the typical North 

 Asiatic Mongols, who, in their 

 wanderings northwards and 

 eastwards across the American 

 Continent, isolated almost as 

 perfectly as an island popula- 

 tion would be, hemmed in on 

 one side by the eternal polar 

 ice, and on the other by hostile 



P!loto by Dri w T GrenfeU , of the MMon (0 Deep 



GREENLAND ESKIMO IN THE SNOW. 



505 



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