42 CRUISE OF STEAMEE OOEWIN IN THE ARCTIC OCEAN. 



If the foregoing means for estimating tlie mental grasp and capacity for improvement be 

 correct, then we must accord to the most northern nation of the globe a fair degree of brain 

 energy — potential though it be. Aside from the mere ])hy.si<;al methods of determining the degree 

 of intelligence it is urged by some writers, among them the historian Robertson, that tact in 

 commerce and correct ideas of property are evidence of a considerable progress toward civilization. 

 The natural inference from this is that they are tests of intellectual power, since mind is a combi- 

 nation of all the actual and possible states of consciousness of the organism, and an examination 

 of the Eskimo system of trade draws its own conclusion. Tlieir fondness for trade has been known 

 for a long time, as well as the extended range of their commercial intercourse. They trade with 

 the Indians, with the fur com])anies, the whalers, and among themselves across Bering Straits. 

 Many of them are veritable Shylocks, having a thorough comprehension of the axiom in political 

 economy regarding the regulation of the price of a thing by the demand. 



THE MORAL HENSE AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT. 



With the aptitudes and instincts of our common humanity Eskimo morals, as manifested in 

 truth, right, and virtue, also admit of remark. Except where these people have had the bad 

 example of the white man, whose vices they have imitated not on account of defective moral nature 

 but because they saw few or no virtues, they are models of truthfulness and honesty. In fsict 

 their virtues in this respect are something phenomenal. The same cannot be said, however, for 

 their sexual morals, which as a rule are the contrary of good. Even a short stay among the 

 hyperboreans causes one to smile at Lord Kames's "frigidity of the North Americans" and at the 

 fallacy of Herder who says, " the blood of man near the pole circulates but slowly, the heart beats 

 but languidly ; consequently the married live chastely, the women almost require compulsion to 

 take upon them the troubles of a married life," &c. Nearly the same idea, expressed by Montes- 

 quieu, and repeated by Byron in " happy the nations of the moral north," are statements so at 

 variance with our experience that this fact must alone excuse a retwence to the subject. So far 

 are they from applying to the people in question, that it is only necessary to mention, without 

 going into detail, that the women are freely ofiered to strangers by way of hospitality, showing a 

 decided preference for white men, whom they believe to beget better oifspring than their own 

 men. In this connection one is soon convinced that salacious and prurient tastes are not the 

 exclusive privilege of people living outside of the Arctic Circle; and observation favors the belief 

 in the existence of pederasty among Eskimo, if one may be allowed to judge from circumstances, 

 which it is not necessary to particularize, and fi-om a word in their language signifying the act. 



Since morality is the last virtue acquired by man and the first one he is likely to lose, it is 

 not so surprising to find outrages on morals among the undeveloped inhabitants of the north as it 

 is to find them in intelligent Christian communities among people whose moral sense ought to be 

 far above that of the average primitive man in view of their associations and the variations that 

 have been so frequently repeated and accumulated by heredity ; and where there is no hierarchy 

 nor established missionaries it is still more surj)rising to find any moral sense at all among a 

 people whose vague religious belief does not extend beyond Shamanism or Animism, which to them 

 explains the more strange and striking natural phenomena by the hypothesis of direct spiritual 

 agency. 



It must not be understood by this, however, that these people have no religion, as many 

 travellers have erroneously believed ; that would be almost equivalent to stating thnt races of 

 men exist without speech, memory, or knowledge of fire. A purely ethnological view of religion 

 which I'egards it as " the feeling which falls upon man in tiie presence of the unknown," favors 

 the idea that the children of the icy north have many of the same feelings in this respect as those 

 experienced by ourselves under similar conditions, although there is doubtless a change iu us 

 produced by more advanced thought and nicer feeling. On the other hand, liow many habits and 

 ideas that are senseless and perfectly unexplainable by the light of our present modes of life and 

 thought can be explained by similar customs and prejudices existing among these distant tribes. 

 Is there no fragment of primitive superstition or residue of bygone ages in the sujjposed influence 

 of the "Evil Eye" in Ireland, or iu the habit of "telling tlie bees" in Germany ? Is there not 

 something of intellectual fossildom iu the popular notion about Friday and thirteen at table, and 



