ing wood, shovelling snow, getting ice on
board, &c. In return they got food that had been left over, and
thus, for the most part, maintained not only themselves, but also
their families, during the time we remained in their neighbourhood.

If what I have here stated be compared with Sir EDWARD PARRY'S
masterly sketches of the Eskimo at Winter Island and Iglolik, and
Dr. SIMPSON'S of the Eskimo in North-western America, or with the
numerous accounts we possess of the Eskimo in Danish Greenland, a
great resemblance will be found to exist between the natural
disposition, mode of life, failings and good qualities of the
Chukches, the savage Eskimo, and the Greenlanders. This resemblance
is so much more striking, as the Chukch and the Eskimo belong to
different races, and speak quite different languages, and, as the
former, to judge by old accounts of this people, did not, until the
most recent generations, sink to the unwarlike, peace-loving,
harmless, anarchic, and non-religious standpoint which they have now
reached. It ought to be observed, however, that in the Eskimo of
Danish Greenland no considerable alteration has been brought about
by them all having learned to read and write and profess the
Christian religion--although with an indifference to the
consequences of original sin, the mysteries of redemption, and the
punishments of hell, which all imaginable missionary zeal has not
succeeded in overcoming. Their innocent natural state has not been
altered in any considerable degree by being subjected to these
conditions of culture. It is certain besides, that the blood which
flows in the veins of the Greenlander is not pure Eskimo blood, but
is mingled with the blood of some of the proudest martial races in
the world. When we consider how rapidly, even now, when Greenland is
in constant communication with the European mother-country, all
descendants of mixed blood become complete Eskimo in language and
mode of life, how difficult it often is, even for parents of pure
European descent, to get their children to speak any other language
than that of the natives, and how they, on their part, seldom borrow
a word from the Europeans, how common mixed marriages and natives of
mixed blood are even now--in view of all this it appears to me much
more probable that Erik the Red's colonists were quietly and
peacefully converted into Eskimo, than that they were killed by the
Eskimo. A single century's complete separation from Euro