450 HYBRIDITY AND ABSORPTION 



year tlie Missionary at Port Douglas reported to the Bishop of 

 Columbia the following return of settlers within his mission field : — 



Citizens of the United States 73 



Chinese 37 



British subjects 35 



Mexicans and Spaniards 29 



French and Italians 16 



Coloured men 8 



Natives of Central Europe 4 



Natives of Northern Europe 4 



206 



Of those the sexes were — ^males, 204 ; females, 2. The admixture 

 of blood with the native population consequent on such a dispropor- 

 tion of the sexes is inevitable ; and though such a population is least 

 likely to leave behind it permanent traces among settled civilized 

 colonists, yet the condition of things which it presents illustrates the 

 social life of every frontier settlement of the New World. One 

 intrusive element, moreover-, has a special interest in reference to 

 American ethnology. Here we see the Mongol of Asia brought into 

 contact with the native American race, which presents many indica- 

 tions of an ethnical affinity to his own ; while beyond this, to the 

 northward, the Russians have long maintained a direct intercourse 

 between Asia and America. There accordingly, within the region 

 of Alaska, Russian traders have contributed another element to the 

 mingling of races j and Mr. Wm, H. Dall, in his " Alaska and its 

 Resources," states the " Creoles or Half-breeds of Alaska" as num- 

 bering fourteen hundred and twenty -one. In 1842, they were, for 

 the first time, qualified to enter the church as priests ; and in 1865, 

 the American expedition found Ivan Pavlofi", the son of a Russian 

 father and a native woman of Kenai, filling the office of Bidarshik, 

 or commander of the post at Nulato. He was legally married to a 

 full-blooded Indian woman, by whom he had a large family. 



Thus far it appears that the admixture of blood is in no degree ' 

 prejudicial to the native race. All along the widening outskirts of 

 the new clearings, and wherever an outlying trading or hunting post 

 is established, a fringe of Half-breed population is to be found marking 

 the transitional border-land which is passing away from its aboriginal 

 claimants. On first visiting Sault Ste. Marie, at the entrance to 

 Lake Superior, in 1855, I was struck to find myself in the midst of 



