force of his own
spirit.

In going to look upon the man of this race, you sail, not merely over
seas, but over ages, epochs, unknown periods of time,--sail beyond
antiquity itself, and issue into the obscure existence that antedates
history. Arrived there, you may turn your eye to the historical past of
man as to a barely possible future. Palestine and Greece, Moses and
Homer, as yet are not. Who shall dare to say that they can be? Surely
that were but a wild dream! Expel the impossible fancy from your mind!
Go, spear a seal, and be a reasonable being!--Never enthusiast had a
dream of the future so unspeakably Utopian as actual history becomes,
when seen from the Esquimaux, or pre-Adamite, point of view.

Swiss lakes are raked, Belgian caves spaded and hammered, to find relics
of old, pre-historical races. Go to Labrador, and you find the object
sought above ground. There he is, preserving all the characters of his
extinct congeners,--small in stature, low and smooth in cranium, held
utterly in the meshes of Nature, skilled only to meet ingeniously the
necessities she imposes, and meeting them rudely, as man ever does till
the ideal element comes in: for any fine feeling of even physical wants,
any delicacy of taste, any high notion of comfort, is due less to the
animal than to the spiritual being of man.

A little sophisticated he is now, getting to feel himself obsolete in
this strange new world. He begins to borrow, and yet is unable radically
to change; outwardly he gains a very little from civilization, and grows
inwardly poorer and weaker by all that he gains. His day wanes apace;
soon it will be past. He begins to nurse at the breasts of the civilized
world; and the foreign aliment can neither sustain his ancient strength
nor give him new. Civilization forces upon him a rivalry to which he is
unequal; it wrests the seal from his grasp, thins it out of his waters;
and he and his correlative die away together.

* * * * *

We reached Hopedale, as intimated above, on the morning of the 30th of
July, at least a month later than had been hoped. The reader will see by
the map that this place is about half way from the Strait of Belle Isle
to Hudson's Strait. We were to go no farther north. This was a great
disappointment; for the expectation of all, and the keen desire of most,
had been to reach at least Cape Chudleigh, at the opening of Hudson's
Strait. Ice and storm had hindered us