182 OCCUPATIONS— LANGUAGE. 



of the Arctic Highlanders, compared with those of the Boothia 

 people, 1 must weigh on their credit side, against the bone "bows 

 and arrows, in deciding the comparative ingenuity and intelligence 

 of these tribes. 



The hunting season of summer and autumn enables the Arctic 

 Highlanders to accumulate large stores of flesh and blubber which 

 last them until December, but their enormous consumption soon 

 diminishes the stock, and in January and February they begin to 

 feel the pinchings of hunger. Then these indomitable hunters 

 have to come out in the intense cold and contend with the huge 

 walrus on the edge of treacherous ice ; while, in very bad seasons, 

 they are reduced to eating their dogs. During the long night 

 they are engaged in mending sledge-harness and preparing har- 

 poon-lines and bird-nets; and the women chew the boot-soles 

 and bird-skins, and make clothes with ivory needles and thread of 

 split seal sinew. Summer brings a bright and happy time of 

 sunshine and plenty. The children drive the babies along in 

 miniature sledges, the boys play at hockey with rib-bones and 

 leathern balls, or catch the rotches with nets attached to long 

 narwhal horns, and the hunters are busy in their attacks upon 

 larger game. All emerge from the dismal iglus, and exchange 

 their darkness and filth for the well-ventilated seal-skin tents; 

 and thus they move from place to place along the coast. 



"We now come to the consideration of the important question 

 of language as an element in the discussion of the origin of these 

 people. That of the Greenland Eskimo belongs to the American 

 type of languages, which Du Ponceau has called polysynthetic, 

 and William von Humboldt agglutinative, from their peculiarity 

 of forming all compound words and phrases by adding particles 

 to the root in a certain way. The Eskimo language certainly does 

 exhibit this peculiarity. It indulges in very long words, such, for 

 instance, as Aulisariartorasuarpok (he made haste to go out fishing), 

 which is composed of the three words, aulisarpok "(he fishes), pear- 

 torpok (he went), and pivesuarpok (he made haste). Aglekkigiarto- 

 rasuamiarpok is not short. But agglutination is by no means 

 peculiar to the American languages ; and Professor Max Midler 

 groups the American with many other languages in Asia and 

 Africa, which he calls agglutinative, not because there is the 

 remotest indication of a common origin, but from the absence of 

 any organic differences of grammatical structure. 2 This is, there- 



1 McClintock., p. 236. 



2 These languages are called agglutinative, to distinguish them from the in- 

 flexion of the Aryan and Semitic tongues, and from the roots of the Chinese. 



