almost, as we have forced our way to the northward, we find traces left behind them by this hardy race.
The tracts which all others despise he has made his own. By dint of constant struggle and slow development, he learnt some things that none have learnt better. Where for others the conditions which make life possible came to an end, there life began for him. He has come to love these regions; they are to him a world in which he himself embodies the whole of the human race.[1] Outside their limits he could not exist.
It is to this people that the following pages are devoted.
The mutual resemblance of the different tribes of Eskimos is no less striking than their difference from all other races in features, figure, implements and weapons, and general manner of life.
A pure-bred Eskimo from Bering Straits is so like a Greenlander that one cannot for a moment doubt that they belong to the same race. Their language, too, is so far alike that an Alaska Eskimo and a Greenlander would probably, after some little time, be able to converse without much difficulty.
- ↑ The Eskimos call themselves inuit—that is to say, 'human beings'; all other men they conceive as belonging to a different genus of animals.
