THE ESKIMO.
The Eskimo are a people in many points unique. They are, perhaps, the
most widely-distributed race in the world, for they can be found over
thousands of miles of ice-bound coast, maintaining themselves under the
most rigorous conditions of climate in a manner no other breed on earth
has equalled.
Their very environment, savagely inclement, has set them aloof from all
other peoples; yet they have passed down through the centuries healthy
and vigorous, inured to extraordinary hardships, and only failing when
they come into touch with civilisation. All along the shores of the
American continent they use the same language, possess the like customs,
and hunt the same quarry with identical weapons, and have done so since
before the memory of history. Yet, as the cold of those regions drives
asunder the particles of ice, so has it driven asunder the Eskimo nation
into small communities, forcing them into groups and families, scattered
by the exigencies of finding a living in so bleak a land. Nevertheless,
it has not defeated them; they hold their own strongly, and are, in fact,
the only permanent conquerors of the Arctic.
My interest in them dates from a certain Christmas-time some twenty
years ago. Fridtjof Nansen had just published his “First Crossing of
Greenland,” a work which is furnished with a wealth of detail concerning
the lives of this hunter people. I was at home from school for the
holidays, and one morning, walking through the town near which we lived,
I was attracted by a picture in a book laid open in the window of the
leading bookseller. This picture, which has its place about the middle
of the second volume, represents an Eskimo, in a skin _kayak_, throwing
his harpoon at a whale. An iceberg in the background, the strange shape
of the Eskimo, the seal, the _kayak_, and, more than all, the huge
bladder-float, appealed with irresistible strength to my imagination.
Were I writing fiction I would go on to describe how I hoarded my
pocket-money and ultimately bought the book. As a matter of fact, I did
nothing of the kind, but followed the easier and more ignoble course of
having the name placed upon the library list. In due time it came, and I
fell completely under the spell of one of the finest works of travel ever
written. And I never forgot the Eskimo, and often dreamed of visiting
them.
But the wish was not accomplished until an evening in 1903, when I at
length found myself on board the _Virginia Lake_, steaming along the
coast of Labrador, down a long _tickle_, or strait, shut in by cliffs.
As the ship rounded a headland we perceived some dark figures squatting
over a fire of wreckage built at the base of a huge cliff. They rose from
their haunches, and uttered in unison a mournful cry, and fired off their
guns; they generally greet the appearance of an alien vessel in this way.
It was my first sight of the Eskimo, or Huskimaw, as the Newfoundland
fisher calls him.
However kindly their present character, in former times, as has been said
in the last chapter, the Eskimo were a fierce and treacherous people,
who, by a show of much friendliness, would entice the men from the
fishing vessels to come ashore, and, later, attack and massacre them
with merciless ferocity. It is beyond question that the race in those
days would have engaged in savage reprisals with white expeditions—to
their own undoing, had not the Moravian Brethren stepped into the breach
and saved them from themselves. The missionaries not only tamed them;
but, having done so much, they further stood between their converts and
another, and greater, menace than the weapons of the armed white invader,
when the tide of immigration swept up the coast, bringing with it many of
the evils of the outer world.
The missionaries recognised the danger, and endeavoured to keep the
Eskimo to the mode of life and the food which had sufficed them for
centuries—since the times, indeed, when the Skraelings or Skraelingers
(the name that the old Norse voyagers gave to the Eskimo) first saw
white faces in Greenland—and which they knew would give them the better
chance of ultimate survival. But civilisation is insidious. Putting aside
the question of strong drink, the Eskimo learned to love coffee, flour,
tobacco; and none of these things are really good for his particular
constitution, which seems to call for the blubber, the walrus head and
seal that he loved to gorge upon in earlier days, when if he could obtain
neither seal nor walrus he and his went hungry.
There were then no drones in any Eskimo hive. Hunger and the pressure
of public opinion in an Arctic environment kills that side of Socialism
which finds its sole issue in talk. Socialism there translates its
doctrines into work and action. The true Socialist is the hunter who tows
ashore a mighty walrus bull, and so by his labour enables the community
to continue to exist.
[Illustration: A successful White Whale Hunt.]
[Illustration: Breakfast at a Summer Camp.]
In those days the Eskimo round of life was simple and healthy. They
occasionally slew deer, but they depended upon the sea for the chief
means of sustenance. Their lives held but one problem—how to obtain a
sufficient supply of bear, walrus, seal and fish to enable them to keep
on the hither side of starvation, to provide material for their clothes
and their summer tents. Life was a struggle—hard and bitter, it is true;
yet death presented himself to them under few forms. Hunger was one,
accident—and accidents at sea in the _kayaks_ or boats of skin were
common—was another. Sometimes, no doubt, death wore the face of disease,
but the ailments known amongst them in their primitive state were few in
number.
It is rather surprising to find that the Eskimo are far from looking
up to the white man. In the early days of meeting with Europeans, he
called them “_Kablunaet_,” “Sons of dogs”; if you contrast this with
his name for his own folk, “Innuit,” which, being interpreted, means
“Men,” you will comprehend that the Eskimo mind is far from flattering
to Outlanders. They are apt as a people to value themselves on their own
greater powers. One can imagine an Eskimo saying to himself “I am not as
those white men are. I am glad of the shape of my body which can endure
cold better than theirs, travel under harder conditions and for longer
distances. Also I can handle a _kayak_ and slay a seal more skilfully
than they, and I am able to gather in the harvest of the sea with at
least as much success.” All of which is true; the Eskimo is exceedingly
hard to beat on his own ground.
The tremendous forces of nature bearing upon him through so many
generations have perhaps altered his physique to suit his surroundings;
or it may be that he was always, as he is to-day, fitted to live the
harsh life from the beginning: for he is said in his physical attributes
to show a remarkable similarity to the cave man.
Some decades ago the Eskimo of the Labrador coast was of a tougher
fibre than he is now. That was before certain of the people, against
the advice and indeed the entreaties of the Moravian missionaries,
permitted themselves to be taken as exhibits to the Chicago and other
exhibitions. They brought back with them typhoid and diphtheria, besides
other diseases all peculiarly fatal to wilderness organisations. Nature
is confessedly cruel to the wild peoples, but civilisation is infinitely
more so. Before her advance wild game and wild tribes vanish away as a
lake mist vanishes under the coming of the sun.
If ever a policy in the world’s history has been proved correct, that
of the Moravian Brethren in wishing to keep the Eskimo to their old
customs has been justified by events, for as civilisation advances up the
coast—outside the limit of Mission influence—the Eskimo race dies out and
disappears. Formerly many of them were to be found on the southern shore
of Labrador, but now there are few or none. Makkovik, the first Mission
station going north, is chiefly inhabited by half-breeds and settlers;
at the next, Hopedale, the numbers of Eskimo are dwindling. At Nain, 120
miles nearer the Pole, the death and birth rates balance each other. In
the still more northerly posts of Okak and Hebron, a hardier breed face
the struggle of life with success; and at Killinek, near Cape Chidley,
the old methods and the old life hold their own as they do all over the
vast snow-fields of the ultimate north.
In Killinek, where the people are just emerging from the wild state, they
rarely wear other than skin garments. A tunic and trousers of sealskin
and long sealskin boots comprise their protection against the coldest
weather, and their babies are carried mostly quite naked in the long
pointed hoods of their mothers’ fur _attijeks_, as the upper garments are
called. And no special ill effects seem to result.
It is a well-proven fact that civilised foods are not only unsuitable to
the Eskimo, but actually sow the seeds of weakness and disease. Nor are
civilised clothes, the product of European looms, adapted to the climate;
but in the southerly settlements, both store food and store clothes are
gaining in popularity—partly because the skin tunic and trousers are
regarded as old-fashioned, and, no doubt, because store garments are so
much easier to obtain.
Now as to the introduction of the rifle, which has long been the
recognised weapon of the coast. The Eskimo are good shots, and at first
sight it would appear as if in this direction, at all events, they have
received a benefit from civilisation’s clanging workshops. But on looking
closer, such a conclusion is open to doubt.
Consider the facts. In the old days, when the sealer harpooned his
quarry, he rarely, or comparatively rarely, lost a stricken beast. But
with the rifle many more are killed and a good many lost, for the carcass
sometimes sinks almost immediately, and the hunter often fails to reach
his beast before the sea swallows it up. It will be seen, therefore,
that for obvious reasons the supply is decreasing, and all game becoming
wilder. Walrus are very seldom seen now, except in very northern waters,
and the seals are far more wide-awake off the Labrador coast than off
our own. Again and again when a seal had seen me, I found it difficult,
sometimes impossible, to approach within 300 yards; whereas, off the
Scottish and Irish coasts I have often got within ordinary camera range.
Fifty years ago, this would have been easy enough in the channels of the
Peninsula.
It is a familiar saying that the wealth of a people cannot be computed
by their riches alone, but rather by the nature of their wants and their
ability to supply them. Let us apply this test to the Eskimo. What does
the Eskimo need? Very many things to-day—some good, some bad. But in
the years gone by, his wants approached the irreducible minimum. Flesh
to eat; skins for garments, tents and boat coverings; wood for paddles,
for the framework of boats, for hafts of weapons; seal oil for light;
and soapstone for cooking vessels. These composed the necessaries of
existence, and he evolved them all from his environment.
And he still in the main supplies his needs from the products of the
chase. The Eskimo year is passed thus: In the spring the hunters kill
seal, and, in the north, white whale and walrus; in the summer they fish
for cod and trout; in the autumn they once more turn their attention to
the seal hunting. Throughout the winter they trap, and just before the
advent of spring, while the snow is still sound, they make long journeys
after the deer by _komatik_ or dog-sledge.
The Eskimo is a good hunter in a deliberate, methodical way of his own.
He is also courageous. I will illustrate this with an account of an event
which happened a couple of years ago north of Nain. An Eskimo hunter
had gone out to shoot ptarmigan, guillemot and divers, when he came
suddenly upon a large Polar bear. He had no ball cartridge, but he at
once advanced to the attack with his shot-gun, and, approaching the bear,
fired a charge of No. 6 full into its face. Now comes the extraordinary
part of the incident. The gun was a muzzle loader, and though the Eskimo
had of intention blinded the bear, the brute at once winded him and
charged fiercely. The hunter tore off his outer garment and flung it to
the infuriated animal, and while the bear was occupied in rending it to
pieces, reloaded his gun and fired a second charge into the bear’s head,
and so eventually succeeded in killing the most formidable of Arctic
animals at close quarters.
The Eskimo is not only a good and persevering hunter, but he is also
a man of no small intelligence. All those at the Moravian settlements
are fairly educated, very few indeed being unable to read and write.
In this they are far ahead of many of the white settlers of Southern
Labrador, and even of a large proportion of the population in some of the
Newfoundland outports. About the Moravian stations the settlers share in
all the benefits of the Mission. During winter-time the boys and girls
from distant bays and islands are sent to Nain or to Hopedale, where
they are boarded out with responsible families and attend evening school
under the superintendence of the missionaries and their wives. The good
results of this teaching are not far to seek, and it is a pleasure to
meet the kindly well-spoken men and women who come in to the stations
from time to time from outlying fjords. In fact, most of the families
have nice, neatly built “town-houses,” their quarter being on one side of
the Mission house and church, while the Eskimo dwellings stand, as usual,
a good deal too close together upon the other.
During the summer the settlements are almost deserted, as a large
proportion of the able-bodied inhabitants are away at their fishing
camps; but the Eskimo generally return to the neighbourhood of the
Missions for the winter. They delight in the church services and are
very regular in their attendance, a baptism specially seeming to appeal
to all the Eskimo within reach. The organist is very often a native man
or woman, and an Eskimo “chapel-servant” or elder frequently leads the
service, and can invariably preach and pray with vigour and fluency. The
settlers, most of whom have their homes at their fishing stations in the
bays or on the islands, come in chiefly for the Church festivals.
The scene on a Sunday is interesting. The churches are very simple: a
platform and desk is occupied by the minister, and the congregation sit,
the men on the right, the women on the left, in the severe division I
have already noted. Very small children are brought to the services,
as the mothers cannot leave them at home; and they behave, as a rule,
with quite extraordinary decorum. Everyone is as neat and as smart as
circumstances permit. The men with snowy _sillipaks_—the cotton covering
for the hooded blanket _attijek_—and the white square-flipper soles
of their high sealskin boots carefully cleaned, while the boys mostly
affect bright coloured jerseys. Many of the girls favour the demure
three-cornered Moravian cap of net with a bow and strings of coloured
ribbon.
[Illustration: Christian Eskimo Woman.]
[Illustration: Heathen Eskimo Woman.]
They are fond of music, and will, if they are given the smallest
encouragement, indulge strenuously in Salvation Army or Moody and Sankey
hymns, translated into their own language by the missionaries. At Nain
there is a quite excellent brass band which played at the consecration
of the church and added much to the general sense of rejoicing. A number
of the people can play the harmonium, and they all delight in owning
gramophones, for as many as can afford such a luxury purchase them.
They sing heartily at their church services, which open with a hymn, sung
seated. At the end of each line there is a pause; at the beginning of the
next, the organist strikes the note first, then he strikes it a second
time, whereupon the people chime in. This pause and the double notes
are repeated at every line: it is purely an Eskimo custom, but somehow
suits the leisurely and rather Gregorian music which the Mission has
brought with it from the place of its birth. One of my companions made a
considerable impression by the beauty of his singing. Following the hymn,
the congregation stand up for prayer and Bible reading, after which comes
the sermon, hymn, and blessing. The services are short, lasting about
half-an-hour, and while they are going on one can see through the church
windows the dogs prowling like stealthy wolves about the hill-sides.
A burial at a station is a strange and impressive sight. I can remember
one at Nain. After a brief service in the church—a hymn, a kind of
liturgy and a prayer—we filed out to the little mortuary close by; for
the dead are not taken into the church. From there we started in a
procession towards the cemetery. The coffin went first, women helping
to balance and carry it on a _komatik_. The Bishop and another Moravian
Brother followed immediately behind, and after them the people.
Arrived at the cemetery by the bluff, the Bishop read the service, the
people responding sonorously; then the coffin was lowered to the sound
of soft staccato singing, while the evening shadows stretched slowly
out across the grave-yard under its high green bluff, and far below the
picket-fence the pale sea shone. Black headlands frowned at us across the
Bay, but beyond them the heights of Paul’s Island burned ruby-red in the
level sunlight. All was wonderfully still and beautiful and sad.
If an Eskimo dies while the family are away at their fishing grounds, the
corpse is buried on the island or on the shore of the bay wherever the
camp may be. A grave is dug and lined if possible with bark, and a cairn
of stones is piled over it.
It would not appear that the Eskimo are a long-lived race, for, except
in the case of quite youthful couples, one finds that one or other
partner—and not infrequently both—in the older marriages has been married
before.
Civilised ailments levy a very heavy tribute on the race. Moreover, in
such a land accidents of flood or field must be taken into account; but
although the Eskimo appear to die quite easily of imported diseases, they
recover from frightful injuries: a fact which is true of all peoples
outside the civilised area. Yet the relative rarity of the aged is a
point which strikes the stranger; a really old person is seldom to be
seen.
Widowers are readily consoled in these latitudes, and the men very
reluctantly wait the six weeks insisted upon by the missionaries before
they marry again. But they have this excuse, that their need for help
in their homes is almost imperative. A wife takes her full share in the
domestic economy; it is she who prepares the sealskins for use, and
the toil of softening them and rubbing off the hair is far from being
light. She also makes the long boots, which may be fairly regarded as the
currency of the coast (a pair being equal to about $1.60), and is obliged
to thoroughly chew the edges of the sealskin to prepare it for the
needle. The teeth of most of the women are in consequence worn almost to
the gum. It is further true that when these boots become hard and stiff
with wear and salt water, or when they dry too quickly, it is then the
wife’s horrid duty to chew them back into comfort for the husband’s feet.
[Illustration: An Eskimo Mother.]
[Illustration: Eskimo Woman in Winter Costume.]
In the Mission houses they use a cross piece of wood like an inverted ⊥
for this purpose. The arms are held down by the feet and the boots worked
firmly by hand upon the upper end until they get supple again; but to
the close of the chapter the Eskimo women will use their teeth, for, of
the few I questioned, one actually expressed a liking for the taste of
sealskin boots.
The round-about Eskimo children are treated with gentleness and
affection: they hear few harsh words. The instinct of adoption is very
strong among the people on the coast, settlers and Eskimo alike; even
where there are children already, one or two extra who have been left
orphan or belong to larger families and can presumably be spared, are
taken into the household and treated with exactly the same kindness as if
they had been born there. It must be said, however, that this desire to
adopt is not entirely an unselfish instinct, for when a couple grow old
or only one is left, the adopted children are expected to take the place
of sons and daughters, and to care for the older people, which indeed
they appear to do quite as often and as readily as those bound by ties of
blood.
For playthings, the Eskimo children have balls made of the crops of
willow-grouse blown out and tied up tightly; usually a few seeds found in
the crop are left inside. Babies’ rattles are woven of bleached sea-grass
with the seeds enclosed. All the boys use bows and arrows, and with
them they soon learn to kill small birds and so become good shots later
on with the gun. There seem to be no native games among the Eskimo at
the present day, though Captain George Cartwright mentions in his book,
published in 1792, that the Eskimo were fond of a game of ball, tossing
it to one another, and also another game like thread-the-needle. Their
only game nowadays is rounders, which was taught them by a missionary,
whose name, not inappropriately, was Fry.
Most of the Eskimo return to the Mission settlements when the summer
fishing closes, but a few of them remain away at their camps till near
Christmas, when they can return with their dogs over the sea-ice, which
is always thick and strong some weeks earlier.
It chanced that the winter of 1909 and 1910 was a very mild season,
and the ice continued to be very thin right up to Christmas. It was
consequently not easy for the people to return to Nain, but all managed
to do so with the exception of one man, who with his wife and three
children had spent the summer on an island some fifteen miles to the
south. They waited on from day to day, hoping the ice would become strong
enough to bear; their provisions were fast disappearing, and the man made
several attempts in his flat to break through the thin ice, and so reach
the mainland. But each time he could only succeed in going a part of the
way. Finally the family were obliged to kill the three husky puppies they
had taken with them to camp, and they lived on the meat as long as it
lasted. At length only the head and heart of the last puppy remained,
so the man made up his mind to set out and try to walk to Nain over
the treacherous ice. He succeeded in making his way there, and arrived
late on Christmas Day. The station was at once full of excitement, two
_komatiks_ were made ready with provisions, and started forth to relieve
the starving woman and children. All ended well, the rescued family being
brought back to Nain safe and sound.
I am here tempted to tell another anecdote illustrative of the life of
the Eskimo. A well-to-do man, who has a good house at one of the Mission
stations, usually spends half the year, from March to the fall, at an
island where he has his fishing camp. There he has built a second house,
where he lives most comfortably, only coming into the settlement from
time to time for stores of one kind or another. This man and his wife
have but one child, a son, who, at the time of which I am writing, was
about twenty years old. As I have said before, the work of the women on
the Labrador is exceedingly hard, and the wife, who was getting on in
years, felt she would like to have a younger woman with her to help in
scraping and preparing the sealskins. The shortest and most certain way
to secure this help lay in obtaining a wife for her son. She imparted
her wishes to her husband, who fell in with them at once. As for the
young man himself, it does not appear that he was in the least anxious
for marriage; but that was a small matter, and he consented with casual
good humour to the arrangement. Proposals were consequently made for the
eldest daughter of a large family, who, though they were settlers, had
some admixture of blood in their veins. As there were so many children
the parents could not be called prosperous; yet the idea of the marriage,
in spite of the prospective bridegroom being, in local estimation, a
rich man, was not entertained for a moment; they would not give their
daughter to an Eskimo. The father of the young man therefore turned his
attention to one of his own race. In this case the lady chosen was away
in a situation as nurse-girl down the coast, but her father, charmed with
the offer, hurried off in his trap-boat to fetch her home. He brought
her away with him, merely telling her she was about to be married, but
refused to divulge the name she naturally desired to hear. Rumour has
it that she wished to choose for herself, but married she was without
more ado, and carried off to the fishing camp, where no doubt her
mother-in-law felt the advantage of having someone to share her labours.
The Eskimo of the settlements are, on the whole, a light-hearted
community ready with smiles, and when they are working together,
unloading cargo for instance, the men and women laugh and joke the whole
time—some of the women carrying their load and a small child in the hood
of the _attijek_ at the same time.
The Mission do not allow intoxicants to be brought in or sold at the
stations, but the Eskimo has discovered how to make a kind of beer with
molasses and hard biscuit; and though it is not very strong stuff, the
Eskimo brain is very inflammable, and the men become very wicked when
drunk. For some years past the Mission have been greatly troubled by this
manufacture of beer, for, thanks to it, wives are beaten, and various
domestic disturbances arise.
Another unfortunate weakness of the Eskimo character is the love of
gambling. At one time card-playing went on every night in the huts,
though no effort was spared to put a stop to it. But both drink and
gambling are now much less prevalent than they were.
A few of the Eskimo are very well off, but I never heard of one who
owned a bank account. Yet a certain very industrious man was reported
to have considerable riches laid up somewhere; certainly he possessed
an extremely comfortable house with lace curtains in the windows. He
had visited St. John’s, where he had ordered fine furniture, for his
sitting-room was adorned with armchairs, rocking-chairs, a piano, and
many gim-cracks. He was very good to the poor and to the widows.
But many of the people are exceedingly thriftless, and linger in the
settlement long after they should be away at their summer fishing. They
can manage to exist quite well at that season, for all of them but the
very poorest have trout nets; besides which they are very generous to
each other. The widows are well cared for by the Moravians, who make
arrangements by which the older ones can earn a living. The younger women
marry without exception. The widows who are widows indeed, become blubber
women—that is, they are employed to cut up the seal blubber for the
caldrons. Boiling out the oil takes place principally at Nain, where the
seals bought by the Mission from the people for this purpose are gathered
from the northerly stations. The smell of the boiling yard is strong;
but the women probably enjoy it, for they frequently may be seen going
home at the intervals for meals, chewing a lump of blubber with much
appreciation as they walk.
For the widows also is reserved the task of cleaning the eiderdown, which
comes chiefly from Killinek, near Cape Chidley. It is necessary that
the room in which this is done should be very hot, and the women sit to
the cleaning frames in the lightest clothing. The frames themselves are
oblong, and at each two workers face one another and rub the down back
and forth across the slats of the frame until the refuse falls through
and the down becomes clean and pure. The old women make sufficient at
this work to keep them all the year round.
Labrador life does not tend to fastidiousness. The Eskimo when shopping
at the store makes no difficulty of carrying away his purchases—tea,
sugar, or flour, or what not—in any portion of his clothing that seems
most available. A supply of molasses is, however, not so easy to handle.
An Eskimo having bought a quart or two on one occasion, searched himself
all over in vain; he could discover nothing to hold it. Saying he would
go home and see what he could find there for transport purposes, he
disappeared, and presently returned with a very old and highly-scented
sealskin boot—these skin boots not being very well cured are redolent at
all times—and insisted upon the molasses being poured into it, and when
that was done carried off his purchase in triumph.
If a mouse “happens” into the molasses, it is taken out and held up
by the tail and licked all over exhaustively that nothing be lost.
Certainly, the Eskimo prefer high seal to fresh; and the flesh is often
left buried to ripen until the ground above it is spongy to the foot! But
this epicurean dish cannot at all times be partaken of with impunity.
At Hopedale, some four or five years ago, an ancient dame was presented
by a kindly disposed friend with a seal’s flipper, which is considered
a dainty. The flipper was more than mellow, and the old lady invited a
certain friend, Jonathan Assa, his wife, and a daughter of thirteen, to
feast with her. The supper was thoroughly enjoyed; but the flipper had
been permitted to “hang” a little too long, with the consequence that
the whole party fell ill. The poor old hostess and the child died of the
meal. Jonathan and his wife recovered.
[Illustration: Entrance to Eskimo House in Winter.]
But it is scarcely necessary to remind the reader that fastidiousness is
the outcome of artificial conditions of existence, whereas the Eskimo
lives very close to nature, and the feeling upon which we civilised folks
pride ourselves is fortunately absent from their physical and mental
equipment.
The range of ideas that present themselves to the minds of the Eskimo is
inevitably narrow. As an instance, I may give one of the difficulties met
with by the Moravian Brethren in their translation of the Old Testament.
One would imagine it simple enough to present the idea of the patriarchs
with their wealth of flocks and herds; but horses, cattle and sheep do
not exist on the Labrador; there may be a few individual animals in the
south, but there certainly are none on the part of the coast inhabited
by the Eskimo. They have, as a matter of fact, no domesticated animals,
save the dogs. Thus the missionaries were driven to figure the herds of
Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob under the guise of seals and fish, interpreting
the riches of the earth by the riches of the sea.
But in spite of their limited possibilities, the Eskimo are an
intelligent people, and, moreover, possess a physique that must rank
high among the diverse developments of mankind, for they have adapted
themselves and their mode of living to the exigencies of a cruel
environment, and their bodily robustness has enabled them to defy the
onslaughts of the Arctic cold. Is not this a race well worth preserving?