79 
9 inches high, drawn in black and red on the face of a block of chlorite 
schist that dipped down to the water’s edge. They were arranged, appar- 
ently, without connexion with each other, and so did not form a consistent 
picture; one figure, indeed, had been painted directly on top of another. 
Several were illegible through weathering; of the remainder the majority 
represented human beings in various attitudes. The local Eskimos be- 
lieved that the drawings were made during a war with Siberian natives, 
and that some of the figures represented battle scenes; but even if the 
tradition is correct, it affords no clue to the date of the pictograph, since 
the Siberians have raided this coast for many centuries. After all, the 
exact interpretation of the figures is of little value. It is significant, 
however, that this is the only rock painting yet recorded from Eskimo 
territory, although such paintings are common among many Indian tribes. 
It is, therefore, one more indication of the close connexion that has existed 
between the Indians and Eskimos of Alaska since remote times. 
Linguistics 
The w r riter gathered vocabularies of about 1,000 words from Wales, 
and from 300 to 400 words each from East cape, Inglestat in Norton sound, 
and Nunivak island off the mouth of Yukon river. These will be incor- 
porated in a “Comparative Vocabulary of the Western Eskimo Dialects,” 
which already contains many words from Wales, Barrow, the Mackenzie 
River delta, and Coronation gulf. Afterwards it should be possible, with 
the help of Greenland and Labrador dictionaries already published, to 
work out the main phonetic rules that have governed the changes in 
Eskimo speech throughout the Arctic, and to reconstruct in certain cases 
the original stem-words of the language. From Greenland and Labrador 
to Barrow and Point Hope in Alaska the dialects change but little; a 
native of the former places could converse fluently, in less than a week, 
with the inhabitants of the latter. At Wales the changes become more 
pronounced, and take on some of the features of the East Cape dialect, 
which is hardly intelligible to the Barrow natives. Some of the peculiari- 
ties of the East Cape dialect seem to reappear at Nunivak island, suggesting 
that the Bering Sea Eskimos may once have spoken a single dialect, 
slightly varied in different places, but from a larger standpoint forming a 
unit as contrasted with the dialects to the north and east. On this theory 
the marked divergences of speech that now occur in certain parts of Bering 
Sea area would have resulted partly from local developments, and partly 
from the influence of neighbouring Indian and Chukchee tribes. 
No attempt was made to record the speech of the Diomede islanders, 
because it appeared to be intermediate between that of Wales and East 
cape. The dialect of Inglestat was remarkable because it differed very 
little from the Barrow dialect, although Inglestat lies considerably south- 
east of Wales. It suggests a movement of the Arctic Eskimos southward, 
with Inglestat as its final outpost; for immediately to the southwest again, 
at St. Michael, the language abruptly changes, and the natives of that 
village understand only with great difficulty the speech of the other. 
5 698 6 — 6 
