THE WHITE WORLD 



That there could not be any human beings who think of 

 nothing but eating and sleeping, might have been evident 

 from the first, for the higher animals have got beyond that 

 stage. All that was needed was to listen to the song of a 

 canary bird. Were there any representatives of the Pithe- 

 canthropus of Java still in existence, we should doubtless 

 find them using some kind of decoration, having some 

 traditions in set form (the beginning of literature) and some 

 regularly recurring intonations or rhythms repeated for the 

 sake of pleasing the ear (the beginning of music). In point 

 of fact the lowest human beings now in existence represent 

 an immense advance over the earliest that might claim 

 the name human. Nine times, most likely, has nature 

 wiped the lower races off the earth to make room for some 

 improved breed, the inferior ones being either exterminated 

 or absorbed as the superior ones spread by virtue of their 

 slightly better brains. And thus it will probably go on 

 indefinitely, and it may be that we have no business to try 

 to stop it. 



A glance at the coat of the Smith Sound Eskimo suffices 

 to show that we are dealing with a race which does care 

 for something besides eating and sleeping. Two-thirds of 

 the seams on this coat are solely for the sake of ornamenta- 

 tion: the sagloreneng on the man's back, the igia down his 

 throat, the nunga across his head, the tunaka on the 

 woman's back, the manuka under her chin, the crsi below 

 the breasts, the tungawing around the lower border — all 

 decidedly handsome patterns, even to the civilized eye. 

 Their tools, houses and tents all bear the same imprint of 

 long development. 



I am not aware that any record has yet been made of 

 their music, except their choral song, the commonest of all, 

 which inevitably attracts the notice of any one who stays 

 with them more than a day or two. The Eskimos of Danish 

 Greenland, indeed, are known to possess a keen musical 

 ear and admirable voices, but the songs they now. sing 

 are said to be all of Danish origin. The first mention of a 

 song among the tribe to the north of Cape York occurs 

 in the report of Sir John Ross, who discovered them in 

 1818: 



" We then tried to discover if they had among them any 



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