The First Landing on Wrangel Island | Page 6

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 numerous occasions among the Eskimo I have visited, that instead of being great gluttons, they are, on the contrary, moderate eaters. It is, perhaps, the revolting character of their food--rancid oil, a tray of hot seal entrails, a bowl of coagulated blood, for example--that causes overestimation of the quantity eaten. Persons in whom nausea and disgust are awakened at tripe, putrid game, or moldy and maggoty cheese affected by so-called epicures, not to mention the bad oysters which George I. preferred to fresh ones, would doubtless be prejudiced and incorrect observers as to the quantity of food an Eskimo might consume. From some acquaintance with the subject I therefore venture to say that the popular notion regarding the great appetite of the Eskimo is one of the current fallacies. The reported cases were probably exceptional ones, happening in subjects who had been exercising and living on little else than frozen air for perhaps a week. Any vigorous man in the prime of life who has been shooting all day in the sharp, crisp air of the Arctic will be surprised at his gastronomic capabilities; and personal knowledge of some almost incredible instances amongst civilized men might be related, were it not for fear of being accused of transcending the bounds of veracity.
ORIGIN AND DEVELOPMENT.
There is so much about certain parts of Alaska to remind one of Scotland that we wonder why some of the more southern Eskimo have not the intrepidity and vigor of Scotchmen, since they live under almost the same topographical conditions amid fogs and misty hills. Perhaps if they were fed on oatmeal, and could be made to adopt a few of the Scotch manners and customs, religious and otherwise, they might, after infinite ages of evolution, develop some of the qualities of that excellent race. It is probably not so very many generations ago that our British progenitors were like these original and primitive men as we find them in the vicinity of Bering straits. Here the mind is taken back over centuries, and one is able to study the link of transition between the primitive men of the two continents at the spot where their geographical relations lead us to suspect it. Indeed, the primitive man may be seen just as he was thousands of years ago by visiting the village perched like the eyry of some wild bird about 200 feet up the side of the cliff at East cape, on the Asiatic side of the straits. This bold, rocky cliff, rising sheer from the sea to the height of 2,100 feet, consists of granite, with lava here and there, and the indications point to the overflow of a vast ice