thern
boundary of British Columbia, there lives a race of people who form, and
have formed, no part of the great human civilization of the world which
has been, and is going on in the more moderately climatic regions of the
earth. For centuries they have lived apart, and have taken no notice of
the big world which has been, and is living itself to death far from
them down in the indolent south, where the sun could shine every day in
the year--where it did shine every day that it was not cloudy, and where
there was no long, dreary, dark midnight of at least four months'
duration; where the sun did not dip beneath the horizon at about the
beginning of October, and disappear, not to be seen again until the end
of March; where, in some parts, there was no snow, while in others only
for a few weeks during the year. No snow! no ice! Can you imagine such a
condition? And up there it is almost the Eskimo's only commodity. He
eats it, drinks it, lives in it, sleeps on it, and his castle is built
of it. And he endures it year after year, from his babyhood to his gray
days, and there appears no hope for him. Bare ground is a curiosity to
the Eskimo; and there are no spring freshets. Their bridges across their
streams are formed of ice; the very salt sea is covered with it; and
they venture out on those great floors of ice in search of the polar
bear and the right whale which form almost their only food, and supply
them with their only source of clothing, heat and light. In the midst of
his narrow and cramped circumstances the Eskimo can laugh at times as
heartily as any other human, and he has grown extremely low in stature
to accommodate himself to the small opening which gives access to his
igloo (house). The average man or woman does not exceed much over four
feet. No other explanation seems to have been offered by science for the
extreme dwarfishness in stature of this curious race of people.

Like the polar bear--almost their only associate in those northern and
frozen wilds--the idea never occurred to this people to migrate south
where the earth is bare and warm, and is clothed in a green mantle;
where the sun shines every day; where the land is flowing with milk and
honey; where peaches and water melons grow, and where it is not
necessary to go through a hole in the ice to take a bath. No, this
strange people, whose food is ice, whose bed is ice, whose home is ice,
and whose grave is ice, are part and parcel of the snowy nor