y analogous to those of the Esquimaux. The hunters of
Siberia tell how a similar race, the Omoki, "whose hearths were once
more numerous on the banks of the Lena than the stars of an Arctic
night," are gone, none know whither. The natives now living in the
neighbourhood of Cape Chelajskoi, in Siberia, aver that emigration to a
land in the _north-east_ had occurred within the memory of their
fathers; and amongst other cases we find them telling Wrangell, that
the Onkillon tribe had once occupied that land, but, being attacked by
the Tchuktches, they, headed by a chief called Krachnoi, had taken
shelter in the land visible northward from Cape Jakan.

This land, Wrangell and others did not then believe in. British seamen
have, however, proved the assertion to be a fact; and Captains Kellett
and Moore have found "an extensive land" in the very direction the
Siberian fishermen declared it to exist. It is not my purpose to enter
into a disquisition upon the causes which brought about this
emigration. Sad and bitter necessity alone it must have been which
thrust these poor members of the human family into localities which,
even in Asia, caused the Russians to exclaim, "What could have led men
to forsake more favoured lands for this grave of Nature?" Choice it
could not have been, for, in America, we see that the Esquimaux has
struggled hard to reach southern and genial climes. In the Aleutian
Isles, and on the coast of Labrador, local circumstances favoured the
attempt, and the Indian hunter was unable to subsist in lands which
were, comparatively, overflowing with subsistence for the Arctic
fishermen; but elsewhere the bloodthirsty races of North America
obliged the human tide, which for some wise cause was made to roll
along the margin of the Polar Sea, to confine itself purely to the
sea-coast; and although vast tracts, such as the barren grounds between
longitudes 99 deg. and 109 deg. W., are at the present day almost untenanted,
still a sufficient population remains to show that an emigration of
these tribes had taken place there at a remote period.

These people reached, in time, the shores of Davis's Straits and the
Atlantic Ocean; and, in a line parallel to them, others of their
brethren who reached the land lately re-discovered, northward of
Behring's Straits, may have likewise wandered along the Parry Group to
Lancaster Sound.

In order to have done this, land must be presumed to extend from the
meridian of Behrin