le to swim and having
the greatest aversion to water except for purposes of navigation. He
wins our admiration from the expert management at sea of his little
shuttle-shaped canoe, which is a kind of marine bicycle, but I doubt
very much the somersaults he is reported to be able to turn in them. In
fact, after offering rewards of that all-powerful incentive, tobacco, on
numerous occasions, I have been unsuccessful in getting any one of them
to attempt the feat, and when told that we had heard of their doing it
they smiled rather incredulously. The Eskimo are clearly not successes
in a cubistic or saltatorial line, as I have had ample opportunities to
observe. They seem to be unable to do the simplest gymnastics, and were
filled with the greatest delight and astonishment at some exhibitions we
gave them on several occasions. Receiving a challenge to run a foot-race
with an Eskimo, I came off easy winner, although I was handicapped by
being out of condition at the time; a challenge to throw stones also
resulted in the same kind of victory; I shouldered and carried some logs
of driftwood that none of them could lift, and on another occasion the
captain and I demonstrated the physical superiority of the Anglo-Saxon
by throwing a walrus lance several lengths farther than any of the
Eskimo who had provoked the competition. As a rule they are deficient in
biceps, and have not the well-developed muscles of athletic white men.
The best muscular development I saw was among the natives of Saint
Lawrence island, who, by the way, showed me a spot in a village where
they practiced athletic sports, one of these diversions being lifting
and "putting" heavy stones, and I have frankly to acknowledge that a
young Eskimo got the better of me in a competition of this kind. It is
fair to assume that one reason for this physical superiority was the
inexorable law of the survival of the fittest, the natives in question
being the survivors of a recent prevailing epidemic and famine.

ESKIMO APPETITES.

As far as my experience goes the Eskimo have not the enormous appetites
with which they are usually accredited. The Eskimo who accompanied
Lieutenant May, of the Nares Expedition, on his sledge journey, is
reported to have been a small eater, and the only case of scurvy, by the
way; several Eskimo who were employed on board the _Corwin_ as
dog-drivers and interpreters were as a rule smaller eaters than our own
men, and I have observed on numer