_The Eskimos._--By comparing the accounts transmitted by different
writers we find that the various tribes, however widely separated
geographically, differ but slightly from each other in appearance,
manners, customs, or language. They are, however, by no means as
uniform in size as might have been expected. Those inhabiting the
vicinity of Norton and Kotzebue Sounds are by far the finest and
tallest, while those living between Cape Lisburne and Point Barrow
are, like the tribes of the eastern portions of America, much
shorter in stature, and bespeak the inferiority of the districts in
which they live.
Both sexes are well proportioned, stout, muscular, and active.
The hands and feet are small and beautifully formed, which is
ascribed by some writers to their sedentary habits, but this
cannot be the case, as probably no people take more exercise or
are more constantly employed. Their height varies. In the southern
parts some of the men are 6 feet; in the more northern there is a
perceptible diminution, though by no means to the extent generally
imagined.
Their faces are flat, their cheek bones projecting, and their eyes
small, deeply set, and, like the eyebrows, black. Their noses
are broad; their ears are large, and generally lengthened by the
appendage of weighty ornaments; their mouths are well formed, their
lips are thin. * * *
The teeth of the Eskimos are regular, but from the nature of
their food and from their practice of preparing hides by chewing,
are worn down almost to the gums at an early age. Their hair is
straight, black, and coarse; the men have it closely cut on the
crown, like that of a Capuchin friar, leaving a band about two
inches broad, which gradually increases in length towards the back
of the neck; the women merely part their hair in the middle, and,
if wealthy, ornament it with strings of beads. The possession of a
beard is very rare, but a slight moustache is not infrequent. Their
complexion, if divested of its usual covering of dirt, can hardly
be called dark; on the contrary, it displays a healthy, rosy tint,
and were it not for the custom of tattooing the chin some of the
girls might be called pretty, even in the European acceptation of
the term.