ARCTIC EXPLORATIONS. 293 



much the same condition as was this country daring the Glacial period. 

 Scores of people have expounded their views on the Great Ice age, but 

 how many of them have had any personal acquaintance with those 

 stupendous masses of ice to be found only near the poles"? The major- 

 ity of these writers argue mainly from their experience of the puny 

 glaciers of the temperate zones. It has been gravely asserted, and in 

 a journal of a scientific society, that ice does not wear down rocks, and 

 that the idea of fiords being excavated by glaciers was a theory that is 

 now abandoned by all geologists. The writer holding these astonish- 

 ing views must allude to those geologists who have never visited the 

 Arctic regions; for all those who have seen for themselves the wonder- 

 ful results of the movements of huge bodies of ice and the marks of 

 glaciation so frequently seen on the rocks of the north must think 

 differently. These are questions that can only be satisfactorily decided 

 by a continuance of polar explorations. 



The science of ethnology would be largely benefited by further inves- 

 tigations in the far north. It may very truly be affirmed that we are 

 only just beginning to know something about the Eskimo from a scien- 

 tific point of view. It is now recognized as an almost accepted fact 

 that they did not come from Asia, and that the few found on the Asi- 

 atic side of Bering Strait migrated from the American side. Rink and 

 other authorities contend that they are essentially of American origin, 

 but the route they took from America is still an open question. A study 

 of the folklore of the Eskimo would doubtless throw new light on the 

 subject. Boas and Rink have shown, and the Danish expedition which, 

 under command of Lieutenant Ryder, recently wintered on the east 

 coast of Greenland, confirmed, that new legends have a most important 

 bearing on the question of the origin and migration of these nomadic 

 tribes. An ethnologist who took the trouble to learn their language, 

 or who had a trustworthy interpreter, could, with the greatest advan- 

 tage to science, spend a year or two among the Mackenzie River, the 

 Ponds Bay, the Smith Sound, or indeed any other Eskimo race, for, 

 with the exception of a slight and imperfect knowledge of the Labra- 

 dor, Greenland, and Cumberland Sound people, absolutely nothing has 

 been done in a field of research which promises such a rich and abun- 

 dant harvest to the cultivator. As Dr. Robert Brown, one of the 

 greatest authorities on this subject, says: 



There are no people on the face of the earth whose characteristics 

 separate them more completely from other races of mankind than the 

 Eskimo. They are extremely homogeneous in physical features, in 

 language, in social habits, in religion, and in modes of life. . . . 

 Though divided into tribes and grouped into broader sections, the 

 Eskimo are everywhere the same people from the eastern point of 

 Siberia to the eastern shores of Greenland. 



Their habitat is the habitat of the seal, the walrus, and the polar 

 bear. But the first named animal is everything to the Eskimo; it is 

 his food, it gives him light, warmth, clothing, implements for the chase, 



