curious
people of the icy north. The pursuits of peace and of simple patriarchal
lives, notwithstanding the fact of much in connection therewith that is
wretched, and forbidding to a civilized man, seem to beget in these
people a degree of domestic tranquility and contentment which, united to
their light-hearted and cheery disposition, is an additional reason for
believing the sum of human happiness to be constant throughout the
world.

MENTAL CHARACTER AND CAPACITY.

The intellectual character of the Eskimo, judging from the information
which various travellers have furnished, as well as my personal
knowledge, produces more than a feeble belief in the possibility of
their being equal to anything they choose to take an interest in
learning. The Eskimo is not "muffled imbecility," as some one has called
him, nor is he dull and slow of understanding, as Vitruvius describes
the northern nation to be "from breathing a thick air"--which, by the
way, is thin, elastic and highly ozonized--nor is he, according to Dr.
Beke, "degenerated almost to the lowest state compatible with the
retention of rational endowments." On the contrary, the old Greenland
missionary, Hans Egede, writes: "I have found some of them witty enough
and of good capacity;" Sir Martin Frobisher says they are "in nature
very subtle and sharp-witted;" Sir Edward Parry, while extolling their
honesty and good nature, adds, "Indeed, it required no long acquaintance
to convince us that art and education might easily have made them equal
or superior to ourselves;" Sauer tells of a woman who learned to speak
Russian fluently in rather less than twelve months, and Beechy and
others have acknowledged the intelligent help they have received from
Eskimo in making their explorations.

Before going further, it may not be amiss to speak in a general way of
the bony covering which protects the organ whose function it is to
generate the vibrations known as thought. Of one hundred crania,
collected principally at Saint Lawrence island, a number were examined
by me at the Army Medical Museum, through the courtesy of Dr.
Huntington, with the result of changing and greatly modifying some of
the previous notions of the conventional Eskimo skull as acquired from
books on craniology. Perhaps after the inspection and examination of a
large collection of crania, it may be safe to pronounce upon their
differential character; but whether the differences in configuration are
const