I 



38 CRUISE OF STEAMER CORWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



Eskimo In fact, the only thing of the kind seen was some rude pottery at Saint Lawrence Island, 

 tlie (lesifrn of which showed but crude development of ornamental i<ieas. The same state of 

 aivancemeut was shown iu some drinking cups carved from mammoth ivory and a dipper made 

 from the horu of a mountain sheei). 



COMB A TI V EN ESS. 



In one of the acts of Shakespeare's Seven Ages the Eskimo plays a very unimportant role. 

 Perhaps in no other race is the combative instinct less jjredouiinaHt; in none is quarreling, fierce- 

 ness of disposition, and jealousy more conspicuously absent, and in none does the desire for the 

 factitious renown of war exist iu a more rudimentary and undeveloped state. Perhaps the 

 constant fight with cold and hunger is a compensation which must account tor the absence of 

 such unmitigated evils as war, taxes, complex social organization, : iid hierarchy among the 

 curious people of the icy north. The i)nrsuits of peace and of simple patriarchal lives, notwith- 

 standing the fact that much iu connection therewith is wretched and forbidding to a civilized 

 man, seem to beget in these people a degree of domestic tranquillity and contentment which, 

 united to their light-hearted and cheery disposition, is an additional reason for believing the sum 

 of human happiness to be constant throughout the world. 



MENTAL CHARACTER AND CAPACITY. 



The intellectual character of the Eskimo, judging from the information which various travellers 

 have furnished, as well as my personal knowledge, produces more than a feeble belief in the 

 possibility of their being equal to anything they choose to take an interest iu learning. The Eskimo 

 is not "muffled imbecility," as some one has called him, nor is he dull and slow of understanding, 

 as Vitruvius describes the northern nation to be "from breathing a thick air" — which, by the 

 way, is thin, elastic, and Iiighly ozonized — nor is he, according to Dr. Beke, "degenerated almost 

 to the lowest state compatible with the retention of rational endowments." On the contrary, the 

 old Greenland missionary, Hans Egede, writes : "I have found some of them witty enough and of 

 good capacity ;" Sir Martin Frobisher says they are " in nature very subtle and sharp-witted ;" 

 Sir Edward Parry, while extolling their honesty and good nature, adds, " Indeed, it required no 

 long acquaintance to convince us that art and education might easily have made them equal or 

 superior to ourselves;" Saner tells of a woman who learned to speak Russian fluently in rather 

 less than twelve months, and Beechy and others have acknowledged the intelligent help tbey 

 have received from Eskimo in making their explorations. 



Before going further, it may not be amiss to speak in a general way of the bony covering which 

 protects the organ whose function it is to geuerate the vibrations known as thought. Of one 

 hundred crania, collected principally at Saint Lawrence Island, a number were examined by meat 

 the Army Medical Museum, through the courtesy of Dr. Huntington, with the result of changing 

 and greatly modifying some of the previous notions of the conventional Eskimo skull as acquired 

 from books on craniology. Perhaps after the inspection and examination of a large collection of 

 crania it may be safe to pronounce upon their differential character; but whether the difi'erences in 

 couiignration are constant or only occasional manifestations admits of as much doubt as the 

 exceptions iu Professor Sophocles's Greek grammar, which are often coextensive with the rule.* 



The typical Eskimo skull, according to i)opular notion, is one exhibiting a low order of intelli- 

 gence, and characterized by small brain capacity, with great prominence of the superciliary ridges, 

 occipital protuberance, and zygomatic arches, the latter projecting beyond the geueral contour of 

 the skull like the handles of a jar or a peach basket ; and lines drawn from the most projecting 

 part of the arches and touching the sides of the frontal bone are supposed to meet over the forehead, 

 forming a triangle, for which reason the skull is known as pyramidal. 



The first specimen, examined from a vertical view, shows something of the typical character 

 as figured in A, and when viewed posteriorly there is noticed a flattening of the parietal walls with 

 an elongated vertex as shown in D ; while a second si)ecimeu, represeuteil by B, shows none of the 

 foregoing characteristics, the form being elongated and the parietal walls so far overhanging as to 

 conceal the zygomatic arches in the vertical view, so that if lines be drawn as previously men- 

 *See Retziua, Finska Kramer, Stockholm: 1878. 



