pe would be
sufficient to carry out thoroughly this alteration of the present
European population of Greenland, and by the end of that period the
traditions of Danish rule would be very obscure in that land.
Perhaps some trifling quarrel between a ruler of the colony and a
native would take the foremost place among the surviving traditions,
and be interpreted as a reminiscence from a war of extermination.

[Illustration: CHUKCH BONE CARVINGS OF BIRDS. Size of the originals. ]

Even the present Chukches form, without doubt, a mixture of several
races, formerly savage and warlike, who have been driven by foreign
invaders from south to north, where they have adopted a common
language, and on whom the food-conditions of the shore of the Polar
Sea, the cold, snow, and darkness of the Arctic night, the pure,
light atmosphere of the Polar summer, have impressed their
ineffaceable stamp, a stamp which meets us with little variation,
not only among the people now in question, but also--with the
necessary allowance for the changes, not always favourable, caused
by constant intercourse with Europeans--among the Lapps of
Scandinavia and the Samoyeds of Russia.

It would be of great psychological interest to ascertain whether the
change which has taken place in a peaceful direction is progress or
decadence. Notwithstanding all the interest which the honesty,
peaceableness, and innocent friendliness of the Polar tribes have
for us, it is my belief that the answer must be--_decadence_. For it
strikes us as if we witness here the conversion of a savage, coarse,
and cruel man into a being, nobler, indeed, but one in whom just
those qualities which distinguish man from the animals, and to which
at once the great deeds and the crimes of humanity have been due,
have been more and more effaced, and who, if special protection or
specially favourable circumstances be absent, will not be able to
maintain the struggle for existence with new races that may seek to
force their way into the country.

[Footnote 271: The north coast of America still forms the haunt of a
not inconsiderable Eskimo population which, for a couple of
centuries, has extended to the 80th degree of latitude. As the
climate in the north part of the Old World differs little from that
which prevails in corresponding regions of the New, as at both
places there is an abundant supply of fish, and as the seal and
walrus hunting--at least between the Yenisej and the Chatanga