36 



CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



outlandish attempt at adornment was witnessed at Cape Blossom in a woman who wore a 

 bunch of colored beads suspended from the septum of her nose. These habits, however, hardly 

 seem so revolting as the use of the labret by the "Mazinka" men on the American coast, of 



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style of personal ornamentation adopted l)y the women of Saint I«iT\Tence Island. 



whom it is related that a sailor seeing one of them for the first time, and observing the slit in the 

 lower lip through which the native thrust his tongue, thought be had discovered a man with two 

 mouths. The use of the labret, like many of the attempts at primitive ornamentation, is very 

 old, it having been traced by Dall along the American Coast ft'om the lower jiart of Chili to 

 Alaska. Persons fond of tracing vestiges of savage ornamentation amid intellectual advancement 

 and aesthetic sensibility far in advance of the primitive man, may observe in the wearers of 

 bangles and ear-rings the same tendency existing in a differentiated form. 



DIVEESIONS. 



I doubt whether Shakespeare's dictum in regard to music holds good when applied to the 

 Eskimo, for they have but little music in their souls, and among no people is there such a notice- 

 able absence of " treason, stratagem, and spoil." A rude drum aud a monotonous chant consisting 

 only of the fundamental note aud minor third, are the only things in the way of music among the 

 more remote settlements of which I have any knowledge. Mrs. Micawber's singing has been 

 described as the table beer of acoustics. Eskimo singing is something more. The beer has become 

 flat by the addition of ice. One of our engineers, who is quite a fiddler, exi)eriinented on his 

 instrument with a view to see what effect music would have on the "savage breast," but his 

 best efforts at rendering Madame Augot and the Grande Duchesse were wasted before an unsj'ui- 

 pathetic audience, who showed as little appreciation of his performance as some peoi)le do when 

 listening to Wagner's " Music of the Future." 



Where they have come in contact with civilization, their musical taste is more developed. At 

 Saint Michael's I was told that some of their songs are so characteristic that it is much to be 

 regretted that some of them cannot be bottled up in a phonograph and sent to a musical composer. 



