~ 
s 
1887] On Some Popular Errors in Regard to the Eskimos. 13 
The village by no means presents an appearance of torpidity. 
The children are playing out-doors, or going out with the dog- 
sleds along the beach for a load of fire-wood; parties are travel- 
ling back and forth between the adjacent villages, and even the 
old men who can no longer lounge round the assembly-house, . 
because it is not heated, except on great occasions, are out in 
groups gossiping on the knolls, wrapped in their cloaks. At this 
season, too, visitors come from distant villages, and the great 
dances and semi-dramatic festivals are held. 
With the “dark of the moon,” late in December, comes the 
season for catching seals in the nets set along the rifts in the ice- 
field. Now the men stay out all night, night after night, in the 
coldest weather, and reap the great seal harvest of the year, a 
single man sometimes capturing as many as thirty in one night. 
After the great seal-netting is over seals are still to be netted 
in small numbers, and hardly a day passes that the men who have 
stayed in the village are not out in greater or less numbers tend- 
ing their nets, while all the women and children are busy catch- 
ing little fish through holes in the ice. Meanwhile, the richer 
or more energetic families have started off with the first gleam 
of the returning sun for the hunting-grounds, three or four days 
inland, where they remain camped in snow-huts, hunting rein- 
deer and catching white-fish through the ice of the rivers, till 
the approach of spring warns them to return for the whale-fish- 
ing. Thus the winter, in spite of the extreme inclemency of the 
climate, is passed in one continued round of activity. 
Hovelacque and Hervé, however, are much more correct in re- 
gard to a point concerning which popular belief is most persist- 
ently at fault. If there is one article of popular faith regarding the 
Eskimos that passes unquestioned, it is that they are very small, 
if not actually dwarfish in stature. Our authors state that the 
pure-blooded Eskimos are of medium or small stature, accord- - 
ing to the classification of Topinard, medium stature being 
1.65 m. (about 5 feet 4 inches), and small stature, 1.60 m. (about 
5 feet 114 inches) and less. They believe that 1.62 m. (about 5 
feet 3 inches) is the average for male Eskimos unmixed with 
Danish or Indian blood. (It is probable, however, that there exist 
few, if any, Eskimos whose blood is mixed with that of the 
Indians, since, till within a few years, Indians and Eskimos, where 
they came in contact, have been on terms of the deadliest hatred.) 
