146 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA 
[chap. 
descent, to get their children to speak any other language than 
.that of the natives, and how they, on their part, seldom borrow 
a word from the Europeans, how common mixed marriages and 
..natives of mixed blood are even now—in view of all this it 
appears to me much more probable that Erik the Red’s 
colonists were quietly and peacefully converted into Eskimo, 
than that they were killed by the Eskimo. A single century’s 
complete separation from Europe would be sufficient to 
carry out thoroughly this alteration of the present European 
population of Greenland, and by the end of that period the 
traditions of Danish rule would be very obscure in that land. 
Perhaps some trifling quarrel between a ruler of the colony and 
a native would take the foremost place among the surviving 
traditions, and be interpreted as a reminiscence from a war of 
extermination. 
Even the present Chukches form, without doubt, a mixture of 
several races, formerly savage and warlike, who have been 
driven by foreign invaders from south to north, where they have 
adopted a common language, and on whom the food-conditions 
of the shore of the Polar Sea, the cold, snow, and darkness of 
the Arctic night, the pure, light atmosphere of the Polar 
summer, have impressed their ineffaceable stamp, a stamp which 
meets us with little variation, not only among the people now 
in question, but also—with the necessary allowance for the 
changes, not always favourable, caused by constant intercourse 
with Europeans—among the Lapps of Scandinavia and the 
Samoyeds of Russia. 
It would be of great psychological interest to ascertain 
whether the change which has taken place in a peaceful 
direction is progress or decadence. Notwithstanding all the 
interest which the honesty, peaceableness, and innocent friend¬ 
liness of the Polar tribes have for us, it is my belief that the 
answer must be— decadence. For it strikes us as if we witness 
here the conversion of a savage, coarse, and cruel man into a 
