me with the Cave men, is to-day
found only in sub-arctic America among the Eskimos, and the fossilized
bones of the musk-sheep lie in a regular trail across the eastern
hemisphere, from the Pyrenees through Germany and Russia and all the
vast length of Siberia. The stone arrow-heads, the sewing-needles, the
necklaces and amulets of cut teeth, and the daggers made from antler,
used by the Eskimos, resemble so minutely the implements of the Cave
men, that if recent Eskimo remains were to be put into the Pleistocene
caves of France and England they would be indistinguishable in
appearance from the remains of the Cave men which are now found
there.[15] There is another striking point of resemblance. The Eskimos
have a talent for artistic sketching of men and beasts, and scenes in
which men and beasts figure, which is absolutely unrivalled among rude
peoples. One need but look at the sketches by common Eskimo fishermen
which illustrate Dr. Henry Rink's fascinating book on Danish Greenland,
to realize that this rude Eskimo art has a character as pronounced and
unmistakable in its way as the much higher art of the Japanese. Now
among the European remains of the Cave men are many sketches of
mammoths, cave bears, and other animals now extinct, and hunting scenes
so artfully and vividly portrayed as to bring distinctly before us many
details of daily life in an antiquity so vast that in comparison with it
the interval between the pyramids of Egypt and the Eiffel tower shrinks
into a point. Such a talent is unique among savage peoples. It exists
only among the living Eskimos and the ancient Cave men; and when
considered in connection with so many other points of agreement, and
with the indisputable fact that the Cave men were a sub-arctic race, it
affords a strong presumption in favour of the opinion of that great
palaeontologist, Professor Boyd Dawkins, that the Eskimos of North
America are to-day the sole survivors of the race that made their homes
in the Pleistocene caves of western Europe.[16]

[Footnote 15: See Dawkins, _Early Man in Britain_, pp.
233-245.]

[Footnote 16: According to Dr. Rink the Eskimos formerly
inhabited the central portions of North America, and have
retreated or been driven northward; he would make the Eskimos
of Siberia an offshoot from those of America, though he freely
admits that there are grounds for entertaining the opposite