THE MORAVIAN SETTLEMENTS. 269 



chest diseases in a single month. This high death-rate 

 may be the result of their partial civilization and less 

 hardy out-of-door life, but their houses are not very 

 different from those their savage ancestors inhabited. 

 The missionaries have wisely not attempted to force 

 upon them European standards of living as regards dress 

 and houses, and their system of trading with them as 

 well as teaching them does not appear to have been ac- 

 countable for this rapid decrease. On the contrary, 

 anthropologists as well as humanitarians are under obli- 

 gations to these devoted Moravians for their success 

 in preserving on American soil this interesting peo- 

 ple intact, unmixed, and with some of their harmless 

 and more interesting habits preserved. They are, how- 

 ever, doomed, judging by the past years' experience, to 

 ultimate extinction. 



The Eskimo settlement of Hopedale, the only one we 

 visited, was founded in 1782. It consisted in 1864 of 

 about thirty-five houses, arranged with more or less dis- 

 order in three principal streets. They are mostly built 

 of upright spruce logs with the bark still on, dovetailed 

 at the corners and banked nearly to the eaves with turf 

 on the outside ; the roof rather flat, though irregular, 

 with a skylight and small window in one side, either, as 

 in the case of the more well-to-do families, consisting of 

 a rude sash with four or six glass panes, or panes of the 

 intestines of the seal sewed together. 



The house is entered through a long low porch, prob- 

 ably the survival of an ancient style, i.e., the low porch 

 of their snow houses through which their forefathers 

 crept on their hands and knees. On entering we were 

 obliged to stoop low and to circumspectly make our way 



