“Their hands and feet are small and well formed.” Kumlien Contrib., p. 15 (Cumberland Gulf).
“Feet extraordinarily small.” Ellis, Voyage, etc., p. 132 (Hudson Strait).
Franklin (1st Exp., vol. 2, p. 180) mentions the small hands and feet of the two old Eskimo that he met at the Bloody Fall of the Coppermine River.
“. . . boots purchased on the coast were seldom large enough for our people.” Richardson Searching Exp., i, p. 344 (Cape Bathurst).
“Their hands and feet are small.” Petroff, Report, etc., p. 134 (Kuskoquim River).
Chappell (Hudson Bay, pp. 59, 60) has a remarkable theory to account for the smallness of the extremities among the people of Hudson Strait. He believes that “the same intense cold which restricts vegetation to the form of creeping shrubs has also its effect upon the growth of mankind, preventing the extremities from attaining their due proportion”!
[17]. Op. cit., p. 238.
[18]. One young man at Point Barrow looks remarkably like the well known “Eskimo Joe,” as I remember him in Boston in the winter of 1862-’63.
[19]. The expression of obliquity in the eyes, mentioned by Dr. Simpson (op. cit., p. 239), seems to me to have arisen from the shape of the cheek bones. I may be mistaken, however, as no careful comparisons were made on the spot.
[20]. Frobisher says of the people of Baffin Land: “Their colour is not much unlike the sunburnt countrie man.” Hakluyt’s Voyages, etc. (1589), p. 627.