150 Report of the Brown-Harvard Expedition. 



of warm clothing and shelter, and the difficulties of obtaining 

 warm water and soap, naturally render impossible any large 

 degree of cleanliness. Yet they tolerate a rather unnecessary 

 amount of filth and refuse in and around their dwellings, 

 which, with their utter disregard of ventilation, while less 

 offensive and less deleterious to their health than the same 

 conditions would be in a warmer climate, are nevertheless 

 harmful to a considerable extent. 



Many of them have considerable skill in making carvings 

 of the ivory of walrus tusks. They do not, however, possess 

 the fine feeling for ornamentation and finish shown by their 

 Alaska kinsmen. This, together with their music, seems to 

 be their only art. Their language is highly polysynthetic, 

 single words of complex structure taking the place of whole 

 sentences. There is a remarkable similarity in its dialects 

 everywhere, from Siberia to Greenland. They differ hardly 

 more from each other than do English and broad Scotch 

 (Keane, Man, Past and Present, i8pp), in spite of the sepa- 

 ration of some of the tribes from each other for perhaps 

 thousands of years. 



Moravian Missions and Hudson's Bay Company Posts. — 

 The most important centres of population in Labrador are 

 about these two classes of posts. The Moravians founded 

 Nain in 1771, Okkak in 1776, Hopedale in 1782. Later they 

 established missions at Zoar, Hebron, and Ramah. Recently 

 Zoar was given up, and in 1896 a new station was estab- 

 lished at Mokkovik. This last has no Eskimos about it, but 

 exists for the benefit of the settlers between Rigolet and 

 Hopedale. Okkak is their largest settlement, with about 

 300 Eskimos. Aside from Mokkovik, Ramah is the smallest, 

 with only 64 Eskimos. These stations carry on a consider- 



