\ 
A Comparison of the different Types of 
Eskimo Culture. 
The Eskimo Territory a Unity as regards Communication. 
N surveying the description of the types given above, in which 1. 
have tried, geographically and ethnologically, to separate the com- 
ponent parts of the economic life of the Eskimo, there is an observation 
which once more calls for attention, viz., that nowhere between two 
groups has there been a boundary so strong that it has not now and 
then — if not regularly every year — been crossed by means of 
sledges in the Arctic regions or by boats in the Subarctic. 
It has already been mentioned that, right down to our own day, 
there ran through Northern Alaska and along the coast of the Arctic 
Ocean an indigenous trade-route which connected the Mackenzie 
Eskimo with the regions towards Bering Strait. From the Mackenzie 
region to Coronation Gulf, from the latter to the Netchillik territory, 
and further eastwards to Baffin Land and Labrador, various travellers 
have found evidence of contact having taken place. 
In certain cases, where the connection has been broken off in recent 
times, the cause appears always to lie in the fact that one of the groups 
| has come under a strong and solely European influence. As an example 
may be mentioned the connection across Melville Bay in Greenland. 
The connection between the American Archipelago and Greenland forms 
an exception. This appears to have been now and then really broken 
off for anthropogeographical reasons, the Eskimo having decimated the 
musk-ox herds along the so-called “musk-ox route”! straight through 
the Archipelago from south to north and north-east. But as the musk-ox 
herds have not been entirely exterminated, they will be regenerated 
when the Eskimo are there no longer, and then there will be possibilities 
for an immigration of new groups of Eskimo. It appears, however, that 
these wanderings must have taken place especially from the Archipelago 
to Greenland; a movement in the opposite direction has undoubtedly 
been of rare occurrence, if it ever has taken place. : 
The first result, then of the present analysis of types is that 
the Eskimo region, in, spite of its extent, hangs together 
* Regarding this cf. M. 0. G., Vol. 34, pp. 393 sqq. and map on p. 401. 
