'HE 



VERSIT/ 



HUFORNl** 



As Bering Strait has so frequently been made use of in 

 order to explain how America could receive its original inhabit- 

 ants from Asia, and as the American side of this sound does 

 not show any trace of having been inhabited by other people 

 than the Eskimo, this race seems to deserve particular attention 

 with regard to all questions touching the prehistoric population 

 of America. If their kinship to other nations has to be judged 

 from their customs and manner of life, they seem to form a 

 natural continuation of their Indian neighbours on the western 

 coast of America. It has been assumed, that the latter abori- 

 gines have come from the interior of the continent following 

 the river courses unto the sea. The same may as well be 

 suggested with regard to the Eskimo, only with the addition, 

 that having reached the ocean they spread along the coasts to 

 the north and the east as far as the same natural conditions 

 and the lack of opposition by earlier inhabitants admitted, 

 occupying in this way regions of enormous extent. In proposing 

 this hypothesis we may leave wholly out of consideration the 

 question, whether in a still earlier period the ancestors of both 

 the Indians and the Eskimo migrated from Asia or not. Hut 

 certainly we will have still to examine another hypothesis which, 

 if even less probable, can not be rejected on the plea that it 

 infers an impossibility, namely that the Eskimo came across 

 Bering Strait, proceeded to the east and the south where then 

 they met with the Indians and in settling finally adopted some 



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