EXTINCTION. 
109 
which these poor wretches have themselves communi¬ 
cated to us,—that they are dying out; not lingeringly, 
like the American tribes, but so rapidly as to be able 
to mark within a generation their progress toward ex¬ 
tinction. Nothing can be more saddening, measured 
by our own sensibilities, than such a conviction; but it 
seems to have no effect upon this remarkable people. 
Surrounded by the graves of their dead, by huts un¬ 
tenanted yet still recent in their memory as home¬ 
steads, even by caches of meat which, frozen under the 
snow by the dead of one year, are eaten by the living 
of the next, they show neither apprehension nor re¬ 
gret. Even Kalutunah—a man of fine instincts, and, I 
think, of heart—will retain his apathy of face as, by the 
aid of Petersen, our interpreter, I point out to him the 
certainty of their speedy extinction. He will smile in 
his efforts to count the years which must obliterate his 
nation, and break in with a laugh as his children shout 
out their ‘Ainna Ayah’ and dance to the tap of his 
drum. 
“flow wonderful is all this! Rude as are their 
ideas of numbers, there are those among this merry- 
hearted people who can reckon up to the fate of their 
last man. 
“After Netelik, the receptacle of these half-starved 
fugitives, had been obliged itself to capitulate with 
famine, the body corporate determined, as on like occar 
sions it had often done before, to migrate to the seats 
of the more northern hunt. 
“The movements of the walrus and the condition of 
