148 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [vn. 



art, and knew how to erect massive buildings of stone. 

 They understood the working of the precious, though 

 not of the useful, metals ; and had even attained to a 

 rude kind of hieroglyphic, or picture, writing. 



The Americans not only employ the bow and arrow, 

 but, like some Amphinesians, the blow-pipe, as offensive 

 weapons : but I am not aware that the outrigger canoe 

 has ever been observed among them. 



I have reason to suspect that some of the Fuegian 

 tribes differ cranially from the typical Americans ; and 

 the Northern and Eastern American tribes have longer 

 skulls than their Southern compatriots. But the ESQUI- 

 MAUX, who roam on the desolate and ice-bound coasts of 

 Arctic America, certainly present us with a new stock. 

 The Esquimaux (among whom the Greenlanders are 

 included), in fact, though they share the straight black 

 hair of the proper Americans, are a duller complexioned, 

 shorter, and more squat people, and they have still more 

 prominent cheek-bones. But the circumstance which 

 most completely separates them from the typical Ameri- 

 cans, is the form of their skulls, which instead of being 

 broad, high, and truncated behind, are eminently long, 

 usually low, and prolonged backwards. 



These Hyperborean people clothe themselves in skins, 

 know nothing of pottery, and hardly anything of metals. 

 Dependent for existence upon the produce of the chase, 

 the seal and the whale are to them what the cocoa-nut 

 tree and the plantain are to the savages of more genial 

 climates. Not only are those animals meat and rai- 

 ment, but they are canoes, sledges, weapons, tools, 

 windows, and fire ; while they support the dog, who 

 is the indispensable ally and beast of burden of the 

 Esquimaux. 



It is admitted that the Tchuktchi, on the eastern 

 side of Behring's Straits, are, in all essential respects, 



