130 ACROSS THE SUB-ARCTICS OF CANADA. 



Behring Straits and landed in Alaska. This theory is 

 based upon the fact that a similarity is traced between 

 the Eskimo language and the dialects of some of the 

 Mongolian tribes of northern Asia. A certain Eskimo 

 tradition would rather tend to bear out this theory. It 

 is something like this : A very long time ago there were 

 two brothers made by the beaver and placed on an 

 island in the Western Sea. There they lived and fed 

 upon birds which they caught with their hands, but at 

 length food grew scarce, and the brothers, being hungry, 

 fought for the birds they had taken. This quarrel led 

 to a separation, and one brother went to live in the 

 western portion of our " Great North Land," and became 

 the father of the Eskimos in that region ; while the other 

 went still farther east, and became the father of the 

 natives of Hudson Bay and Straits. 



The range of the Eskimos is very large, extending 

 completely across the northern part of North America 

 toward the south, to about the sixtieth parallel of 

 latitude, west of Hudson Bay, but east of the bay, to 

 about the fifty-fifth parallel ; while toward the north 

 their range is almost unlimited. They are a very thinly 

 scattered race, roving in small bands over great treeless 

 wildernesses. 



My first meeting with the Eskimos led me to think 

 them a wild people. There were thirty-six of them, all 

 women and children, piled into one of their "oomiacks," 

 or skin boats, and all were whooping and yelling at the 

 top of their voices, while those not paddling were swing- 

 ing their arms (and legs, too) in the wildest manner. 

 They were natives of Prince of Wales Sound, Hudson 



