Part 18 (1/2)
Their complexion is clear. They are thick-set, have a decided tendency to obesity, and are seldom more than five feet in height.
During a journey undertaken by Dr. Kane of New York to the 82nd degree of northern lat.i.tude, this bold explorer spent more than a year amongst the Esquimaux who live at Etah, the nearest human abode to the North Pole. Men, women, and children, covered only by their filth, laid in heaps in a hut, huddled together in a kind of basket. A lamp, with a flame sixteen inches long produced by burning seal oil, warmed and lighted the place. Bits of seal's flesh, from whence issued a most horrible ammoniacal odour, lay upon the floor of this den.
Fig. 93 represents the summer encampment of a tribe of Esquimaux, and fig. 94 a winter one. Fig. 95 represents a village, that is to say, a collection of huts made of blocks of snow which shelter from the excessive cold these disinherited children of Nature.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 93.--ESQUIMAUX SUMMER ENCAMPMENT.]
The seals from the bay of Reusselaer provide the Esquimaux with food during the greater part of the year. More to the south, as far as Murchison's channel, the whale penetrates in due season. The winter famine begins to cease when the sun reappears. January and February are the months of hards.h.i.+p; during the latter part of March the spring fisheries recommence, and with them movement and life begin anew. The poor wretched dens covered with snow are then the scenes of great activity. The ma.s.ses of acc.u.mulated provisions are then brought out and piled up on the frozen ground: the women prepare the skins to make shoes of, and the men make a reserve store of harpoons for the winter. The Esquimaux are not lazy. They hunt with a good deal of pluck, and are often forced to hide their game in excavations that the wild beasts may not get at it. Their consumption of food is very great. They are large eaters, not from greediness, but of necessity, on account of the extreme cold of these high lat.i.tudes.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 94.--ESQUIMAUX WINTER ENCAMPMENT.]
Fig. 96 represents, according to Doctor Kane, the chief of an Esquimaux tribe.
Doctor Hayes, in his ”Journey to the Open Sea of the North Pole,”
published in 1866, has described the Esquimaux type. A broad face, heavy jaws, prominent cheek bones, a narrow forehead, small eyes of a deep black, thin long lips, with two narrow rows of sound teeth, jet-black hair, a little of it on the upper lip and on the chin; small in stature but stoutly built, and a robust const.i.tution of a vigorous kind; such are the distinguis.h.i.+ng characteristics of the people of the far north.
The Esquimaux style of dress seemed, to the learned traveller, pretty much the same for both s.e.xes; a pair of boots, stockings, mittens, trousers, a waistcoat, and an overcoat. The father-in-law of one of his travelling companions wore boots of bearskin coming up to the knee, whilst those of his wife reached much higher, and were made of seal leather. Their trousers were made of sealskin, their stockings of dogskin, their mittens of sealskin, and their waistcoat of kidskin with the fur inside.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 95.--ESQUIMAUX VILLAGE.]
The overcoat, made of the skin of the blue fox, does not open in front, but is put on like a s.h.i.+rt. It ends in a hood covering the head like the cowl of a monk. The women cut their coat to a point, in order to confine their hair, which they gather together on the top of the head, and tie up in a knot as close and as hard as a stone, by means of untanned straps of sealskin. This is shown in fig. 93.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 96.--ESQUIMAUX CHIEF.]
Seal-hunting is the chief occupation of the Esquimaux. The seal is a providential animal to the wild inhabitants of the sh.o.r.es of the Frozen Ocean of America, as the reindeer is the G.o.dsend of the Laplanders, inhabitants of the sh.o.r.es of the same seas in the north of Europe.
[Ill.u.s.tration: 97.--ESQUIMAUX BIRD-CATCHER.]
The eggs of the seabirds, particularly of the penguin, are a second source of food to these people. The Esquimaux run all sorts of risks to gather the eggs of these birds on the steep and giddy cliffs where their nests are found (fig. 97).
The Esquimaux can only count up to ten, the number of their fingers.
They have no system of notation, and can a.s.sign no date to past events.
They have no annals of any kind or sort, and do not even know their own age.
TEMISIAN FAMILY.
A people more generally known under the name of _Ostiaks_ of _Temisia_.
They speak a very different language from that of the Ostiaks of the Obi whom we have already mentioned as belonging to the White Race.
JUKAGHIRITE AND KORIAK FAMILIES.
These are wandering people, becoming more and more absorbed in the Russian population. They live on the sh.o.r.es of Behring's Straits, or in the interior, and much resemble the Samoiedes in their customs and in their language.