Rae, 1878:[222] "All the Eskimos with whom I have communicated on the subject, state that they originally came very long ago from the west, or setting sun, and that in doing so they crossed a sea separating the two great lands.
"That these people (the Eskimos) have been driven from their own country in the northern parts of Asia by some unknown pressure of circumstances, and obliged to extend themselves along the whole northern coast line of America and Greenland, appears to be likely, and that the route followed after crossing Bering Strait was of necessity along the coast eastward, being hemmed in by hostile Indians on the south, and driven forward by pressure from the west * * *.
"Such were my opinions 12 years ago, and their correctness has been rather confirmed than otherwise, by all that we have since learned. * * *"
1887:[223] "Professor Flower said that his investigation into the physical characteristics of the Eskimos led him to agree entirely with Doctor Rae's conclusions derived from other sources. He looked upon the Eskimos as a branch of the North Asiatic Mongols (of which the Japanese may be taken as a familiar example), who in their wandering across the American continent in the eastward direction, isolated almost as perfectly as an island population would be, hemmed in on one side by the eternal polar ice, and on the other by hostile tribes of American Indians, with whom they rarely, if ever, mingled, have gradually developed special modifications of the Mongolian type, which increase in intensity from west to east, and are seen in their greatest perfection in the inhabitants of Greenland. * * *
"Doctor Rae also thinks that the Eskimos came from across Bering Strait from Asia. Their traditions and many other things point in that direction, and they are in no way related to the ancient cave men of Europe."
Dawson, 1880:[224] Eskimo: "On the eastern side of the continent these poor people have always been separated by a marked line from their Indian neighbors on the south, and have been regarded by them with the most bitter hostility. On the west, however, they pass into the Eastern Siberians, on the one hand, and into the West-coast Indians, on the other, both by language and physical characters. They and the northern tribes at least of West-coast Indians, belong in all probability to a wave of population spreading from Bering Strait."