160 PRESSURE ON STBEPTAN TRIBES. 



as the present settlement of TJpernivik, some ruins and the broken 

 church-bells of Gardar. The Skrcellings or Eskimos, are in sole 

 possession from Kingitok to Cape Farewell. And the ancient 

 Norse records are fully corroborated by the traditions of the Es- 

 kimos, in the statement that they originally came from the north. 

 Like the Mongolian races, the Eskimos are careful genealogists ; 

 Crantz tells us that they could trace back for ten generations ; l and 

 the story handed down from their forefathers is that they reached 

 Southern Greenland by journeys from the head of Baffin's Bay. 



The interesting question now arises — whence came these Green- 

 land Eskimos, these Innuit, or men, as they call themselves. They 

 are not descendants of the Skrcellings of the opposite American coast, 

 as has already been seen. It is clear that they cannot have come 

 from the eastward, over the ocean which intervenes between Lapland 

 and Greenland, for no Eskimo traces have ever been found on 

 Spitsbergen, Iceland, or Jan Mayen. We look at them and see 

 at once that they have no, or only very remote, kinship with the 

 red race of America ; but a glance suffices to convince us of their 

 relationship with the Tuski or northern tribes of Siberia. ' It is in 

 Asia, then, that we must seek their origin, that cradle of so many 

 races, and the search for some clue is not altogether without result. 



During the centuries preceding the first reported appearance of 

 Skrcellings in Greenland, and for some time previously, there was 

 a great movement among the people of Central Asia. Tugrul 

 Beg, Jingiz Khan, and other chiefs of less celebrity, led vast 

 armies to the conquest of the whole earth, as they proudly boasted. 

 The land of the Turk and the Mongol sent forth a mighty series 

 of inundations which flooded the rest of Asia during several cen- 

 turies, and the effects of which were felt from the plains of Silesia 

 to the shores of the Yellow Sea, and from the valley of the Ganges 

 to the frozen tundra of Siberia. The pressure caused by these in- 

 vading waves on the tribes of Northern Siberia drove them still 

 farther to the north. Year after year the intruding Tatars con- 

 tinued to press on. Shaibani Khan, a grandso'n of the mighty 

 Jingiz, led fifteen thousand families into these northern wilds, and 

 their descendants, the Iakhuts, pressed on until they are now found 

 at the mouths of rivers falling into the Polar Ocean. But these 

 regions were formerly inhabited by numerous tribes which were 

 driven away still farther north, over the frozen sea. Wrangell has 

 preserved traditions of their disappearance, and in them, I think, 

 we may find a clue to the origin of the Greenland Eskimos. 



1 Crantz, i. p. 22ft. 



