486 REVIEWS. 



maux, and attracted the attention of Dr. Pickering, when in use by 

 the Aleutian Islanders, as so perfectly adapted to the requirements of 

 the Arctic fisherman, that " it seemed almost to enable man to take 

 a place among the proper inhabitants of the deep." 



It is altogether beyond the compass of our limited space to follow 

 the author in his elaborate geographical, chronological, geological, and 

 natural history details, extending in all to 628 closely printed pages. 

 But a few characteristic extracts may serve to show our readers the 

 value of this repertory of novel facts in these varied departments of 

 research. Whilst in the Yukon territory he remarks (page 19), '^our 

 attention was attracted by the numerous graves. These are well worth 

 the careful attention of the ethnologist ; many of them are very old. 

 The usual fashion is to place the body, doubled up, on its side, in a 

 box of plank hewed out of spruce logs and about four feet long ; this 

 is elevated several feet above the ground on four posts, which project 

 above the coffin or box. The sides are often painted with red chalk, in 

 figures of fur-animals, birds and fishes. According to the wealth of 

 the dead man, a number of articles which belonged to him are attached 

 to the coffin or strewed around it. Some of them have kyaks, bows 

 and arrows, hunting implements, snow-shoes, or even kettles, around 

 the grave or fastened to it; and almost invariably the wooden dish or 

 hantag, from which the deceased was accustomed to eat, is hung on 

 one of the posts. There are many more graves than present inhabitants 

 of the village, and the story is that the whole coast was once much 

 more densely populated." The same evidences of a decreasing Eskimo 

 population have been recorded by Kane and other explorers as still 

 more noticeable on the eastern coast, and these, along with the decline 

 and ultimate destruction of the ancient Scandinavian colonies of Green- 

 land, have been supposed by some writers to point to a gradually 

 increasing severity of climate throughout the whole Arctic circle. 



Inhospitable, however, as the whole Yukon region is, it has its 

 charms for its own children, as that " land, of every land, the pride," 

 not less keenly appreciated by them than by those of earth's most favored 

 spots. They call themselves, in proud pre-eminence, the men of Yiihen ; 

 and as for the Yukon boys, they would appear, according to Mr. Dall's 

 account, to enjoy a more enviable lot even than the children of that 

 republican Paradise where, according to some authorities, the repeal of 

 the fifth commandment has been enacted by juvenile acclamation. 

 Writing up his journal on the 29th of April, he says : " The weather 



