1380 ACROSS THE SUB-ARCTICS OF CANADA. 
Behring Straits and landed in Alaska. This theory is 
based upon the fact that a similarity is traced between 
the Eskimo language and the dialects of some of the 
Mongolian tribes of northern Asia. A certain Eskimo 
tradition would rather tend to bear out this theory. It 
is something like this: A very long time ago there were 
two brothers made by the beaver and placed on an 
island in the Western Sea. There they lived and fed 
upon birds which they caught with their hands, but at 
length food grew scarce, and the brothers, being hungry, 
fought for the birds they had taken. This quarrel led 
to a separation, and one brother went to live in the 
western portion of our “Great North Land,” and became 
the father of the Eskimos in that region ; while the other 
went still farther east, and became the father of the 
natives of Hudson Bay and Straits. 
The range of the Eskimos is very large, extending 
completely across the northern part of North America 
—toward the south, to about the sixtieth parallel of 
latitude, west of Hudson Bay, but east of the bay, to 
about the fifty-fifth parallel; while toward the north 
their range is almost unlimited. They are a very thinly 
scattered race, roving in small bands over great treeless 
wildernesses. 
My first meeting with the Eskimos led me to think 
them a wild people. There were thirty-six of them, all 
women and children, piled into one of their ‘‘ oomiacks,” 
or skin boats, and all were whooping and yelling at the 
top of their voices, while those not paddling were swing- 
ing their arms (and legs, too) in the wildest manner. 
They were natives of Prince of Wales Sound, Hudson 
