52 VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. 



are frank and sanguine in their manner, averse to theft, fraud and falsehood, 

 improvident and insensible in their social relations. 



The Yakaguires traverse the icy region between the Yakouts and the Frozen 

 ocean, and avoid all other people. 



The Kamschatkans have the physical traits of the adjacent Polar tribes, 

 excepting that their w^omen are handsomer; but their moral and intellectual 

 character is different. They are said to possess a strong memory, and a remark- 

 able tact at mimicry ; despise labor, which they resume only from the necessities 

 of the passing hour, and are cowardly in the extreme. It must be admitted that 

 the southern Kamschatkans, in common with the southern tribes of Tungusians 

 and Ostiaks, have so long mixed with the proximate Mongol-Tartar hordes, that 

 it is in some measure arbitrary to class them definitively with either family, for 

 their characters are obviously derived from both. 



The Koriaks^ who inhabit north of the Kamschatkans, are dull of compre- 

 hension, obstinate and revengeful, yet industrious and susceptible of friendship. 

 Their language, though in many respects peculiar, has a near affinity to that of 

 their neighbors the Tchukchi. 



The Tchukches resemble the Koriaks in person, manners and language, and 

 form the intermediate link between the latter nation and the Polar tribes of 

 America. They are barbarous and cruel, and repugnant to every form of civilisa- 

 tion. "In short," says Mr. Tooke, "they are naturally as wicked and as dangerous 

 as the Tungusians are mild and gentle."^ In person they are small and spare, 

 yet have the round, flat face of the other people of this race. Their chief riches 

 consist in herds of reindeer, of which animals it is not uncommon for individuals 

 to possess ten thousand.f 



The KurUians inhabit the Kurile islands, which stretch from the peninsula 

 of Kamschatka almost to Japan. These people have good complexions and a 

 copious beard, but in other particulars resemble the adjacent hordes. 



Crossing to the American continent we find the Polar race composed of the 

 Eskimaux and Greenland ers, who are both generally included in the former name, 

 an Algonkin word signifying "eaters of raw flesh;" but their own national designa- 

 tion is Keralit. They are the sole inhabitants of the shores of all the seas, bays, 

 inlets and islands of America, north of the 60th degree of north latitude, from the 

 eastern coast of Greenland in longitude 21"=^, to the straits of Behring in longitude 

 127^ west. On the Atlantic they also skirt the coast of Labrador, and are even 



* Russia, III, p. 177. t Ibid. Ill, p. 187. 



