30 CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIX IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



as that of aa officer of tlie Hudsou Bay Company, then resident in Ungava Bay, who relates that 

 in 1839 an Eskimo family crossed to Labrador from the northern shore of Hudson's Straits on a 

 raft of drift-wood. Natives cross and recross Bering Straits to-day on the ice and in primitive 

 skin canoes, not unlike Cape Cod dories, wliich have not been improved in construction since the 

 days of prehistoric man. Indeed the primitive man may be seen at East Cape almost as he was 

 thousands of years ago. Evolution and development, with the exception of firearms, seem to 

 liave halted at East Cape. The place with its cave-like dwellings and skin-clad inhabitants, among 

 whom the presence of white men creates the same excitement as the advent of a circus among the 

 colored population of Washington, makes one fancy that he is in some grand prehistoric museum 

 and that he has gone backward in time several thousand years in order to get there. 



While we may do something towards tracing the effects of physical agents on the Eskimo 

 back into the darkness that antedates history, yet his geographical origin and his antiquity are 

 things concerning which we know but little. Being subjects of iirst-class interest deserving of 

 grave study and so vast in themselves, they cannot be touched upon here except incidentally. 

 Attempting to study them is like following the labyi-inthal ice mazes of the Arctic in quest of 

 the North Pole, and only ends in a wild-goose chase. 



We may, however, venture the assertion that the Eskimo is of autocthonic origin in Asia, but 

 is not autocthonous in America. His anival there and subsequent migi-ations are beyond the 

 reach of history or tradition. Others, though, contend from the analogy of some of the western 

 tribes of Brazil, who are identical in feature to the Chinese, that the Eskimo may have come from 

 South America ; and the fashion of wearing labrets, which is common to the indigenous population 

 both of Chili and Alaska, has been cited as a further proof. 



Touching the subject of early migrations Mr. Charles Wolcott Brooks, whose sources of informa- 

 tion have been exceptionally good, reports in a paper to the California Academy of Sciences 

 a record of sixty Japanese junks, which were blown oft' the coast and by the influence of the 

 Kuro-Shiwo were drifted or stranded on the coast of North America, or on the Hawaiian or 

 adjacent islands. As merchant ships and ships of war are known to have been built in Japan 

 prior to the Christian era, a great number of disabled junks containing small parties of Japanese 

 must have been stranded on the Aleutian Islands and on the Alaskan coast in ijast centuries, 

 thereby furnishing evidence of a constant infusion of Japanese blood among the coast tribes. 



Leaving aside any attempt to show the ethnical relations of these facts, the question naturally 

 occurs whether any of these waifs ever found their way back from the American coast. On 

 observing the course of the great circle of the Kuro-Shiwo and the course of the trade winds, one 

 inclines to the belief that such a thing is not beyond the range of possibilitj'. Indeed, several 

 well-authenticated instances are mentioned by Mr. Brooks ; and in connection with the subject he 

 advances a further hypothesis, namely, tlie American origin of the Chinese race, and shows in a 

 plausible way that^ — 



' ' The ancestrj' of China may have embarked iu large vessels as emigrants, perhaps from the vicinity of the Chincha 

 Islands, or proceeded \^'ith a large fleet, like the early Chinese expedition against Japan, or that of Julius Caesar against 

 Britain, or the Welsh Prince Madog and his party, who saUed from Ireland and landed in America A. D. 1170; and, in 

 like manner, in the dateless antecedure of history, crossed from the neighborhood of Peru tor the country now known to us 

 as China. ' ' 



If America be the oldest continent, paleoutologically speaking, as Agassiz tells us, there appears 

 to be some reason for looking to it as the spot where early traces of the human race are to be found, 

 and the fact would seem to warrant further study and investigation in connection with the indigenous 

 people of our continent, thereby awakening new sources of inquiry among ethnologists. 



LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES. 



The sienite plummet from San Joaquin Valley, California, goes back to the distant age of the 

 Drift ; and the Calaveras skull, admitting its authenticity, goes back to the Pliocene epoch, and is 

 older than the relics or stone implements from the drift gravel and the European caves. 



It is doubtful, though, whether these sources enable us to make generalizations equal iu value 

 to those aftbrded by the study of vocabularies. It is alleged that linguistic affinities exist between 

 some of the tribes of the American coast and our Oriental neighbors across the Pacific. Mr. Brooks, 



I 



