101 



beings Veygali or Vaygeli ; while it is luirdly within the range of possibility 

 that an}- living beings could ever have subsisted or existed in the rugged 

 and contracted area which forms the interior of even the largest of the 

 Aleutian Islands. 



Now as to the facts on ^\'hicli Mr. Markham bases his hypothesis; they 

 are, when confirmed by consulting original authorities, about as follows: 

 That there are numerous traces of inhabitants on the north shore of Asia 

 and the archipelago in the Polar Sea north of America, where no people 

 now live; that there were once numerous tribes in Eastern Siberia no longer 

 existing; that Wrangell mentions that the Omoki (Sabine's ed., p. 187), a 

 "nation" possessing "a certain degree of civilization, and acquainted with 

 the use of iron before the an-ival of the Russians"; "left the banks of the 

 Kolyma in two large divisions with their reindeer," probably turning "to 

 the west along the Polar Sea", numerous yourts still existing "near the mouth 

 of the Indigirka", though no one rememl^ers any settlement there, and the 

 place "is still called Omokskoia Yourtovicha". He mentions a ti-adition that 

 tliey went northward, driven by the small-pox and other contagious diseases 

 brought by Russians, and also a tradition that about two hundred years ago 

 fifteen canoe-loads of Onkilon (Asiatic Innuit), in consequence of some feuds 

 with the Chukchi, fled to Wrangell's Land, and were perhaps followed by 

 one Chixkchi family ; also that the Innuit invasion of Greenland in the 

 fourteenth century proceeded from the north, and the Innuit tribe of "Arctic 

 Highlanders" still live in North Greenland, separated by some distance from 

 any other Innuit tribe. 



All these facts can be explained without Mr. Markham's hypothesis, 

 which stretches them beyond their endurance, and contains statements and 

 inferences not justified by the text of the works he refers to. This will 

 readily be seen by consulting the notes 1 have appended to the extracts I 

 have quoted from his paper. 



Certainly, emigration caused, according to Wrangell, in the seventeenth 

 century, by the advent of the Rvxssians, could not have produced an invasion 

 of Greenland thi-ee hundred years previously, and there are no traditions 

 recorded of any earlier exodus from Eastern Siberia on which to base an 



