remainder are as 5.5 to 7.3; as 5.1 to 7.5; and as 5 to 6.7, proportions
by no means exclusively Eskimo, and proportions which occur in very many
of the undeniably American stocks.
Likeness there is; and variety there is;--likeness in physical feature,
likeness in language, and likeness in the general moral and intellectual
characteristics. And then there is variety--variety in all the details
of their arts; variety in their bows, their canoes, their dwellings,
their fashions in the way of incisions and tattooings, and their
fashions in the dressing of their hair.
This is as much as can be said about the Eskimo at present. It is,
however, preparatory to the general statement that _all the remaining_
Indians of British North America recede from the Sioux and Iroquois
type, and approach that of the family in question. Such, indeed, has
been the case, though (perhaps) in a less degree, with one of the
classes already considered--the Athabaskan.
_The Koluch._--The extreme west of the British possessions beyond the
Rocky Mountains, _north_ of latitude 55 deg. is but imperfectly known.
Indeed, for scientific, and, perhaps, for political purposes as well,
the country is unfortunately divided. The Russians have the long but
narrow strip of coast; and, consequently, limit their investigations to
its bays and archipelagoes. The British, on the contrary, though they
possess the interior, have no great interest in the parts about the
Russian boundary. In the way of trade, they are not sufficiently on the
sea for the sea-otter, nor near enough the mountains for other
fur-bearing animals.
Now, the mouth of the Stikin River is Russian, the head-waters British.
Beyond these, we have the water-system of the McKenzie--for that river,
although falling into the Arctic Sea, has a western fork, which breaks
through the barrier of the Rocky Mountains, and changes in direction
from west and south-west to north. Lake Simpson, Lake Dease, and the
River Turnagain belong to this branch; the tract in which they lie being
a range of highlands, if not of mountains.
This is the country of the Nehannis; conterminous on the south with that
of the Takulli, and on the north-east with that of the Dahodinni. How
far, however, it extends towards the Russian boundary and in the
north-west direction I cannot say.
The Nehannis are, probably, the chief British representatives of the
class called Koluch.[75] Assuming this--although from the want of a
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