THE ESKIMOS 



launched their skin canoes and square-ended umiaks 

 (or women's boats), and crossed the perilous waters 

 of what we know as Behring's Strait. They 

 found fish and seals along the Alaskan coast, and 

 some were well content to settle there. Others 

 fared further, slowly wandering along the North- 

 West Passage before ever the civilised world dreamt 

 of its existence. Some reached Greenland ; some 

 came southward to Labrador; wherever they saw 

 seals in plenty, there they stayed until their roving 

 spirit drove them on. And so it seems to have 

 come about that in Alaska, in Baffin's Land, in 

 Greenland and Labrador, there are Eskimos, wide 

 apart as miles go, but close together in speech and 

 ways of living. We do not know whether the 

 North- West Passage holds any proof of this long- 

 ago migration ; its shores are barren and unexplored ; 

 it probably upon this or that rocky promontory 

 >uld be found the typical burying-places of the 



leathen Eskimos. 



But I must bring my story into the bounds of 



lodern times. To write of the Eskimos as they 

 in bygone days would be a fascinating thing, 



mt it would mean building upon a slender foun- 

 ition. No, the past of the Eskimo people must 



Iways remain something of a mystery. They have 



LO written records : they are a nation without a 



dstory ! 



It is not very many years since civilization 

 reached them ; and so as I wandered among the hills 

 of Labrador I found flint weapons and soft stone 

 cooking-pots beside graves whose bones had not yet 

 returned to dust. Armed with their flint-tipped 

 arrows they hunted the bear and the reindeer ; 



