Again we will go back to the dispersion of mankind at Babel. We have seen that of the three sons of Noah, the descendants of Japheth peopled the greater portion of Asia, including the northern and northeastern sections. And the Japhethites were the last to establish a civilization, though they are to-day the most civilized people on earth. From this branch of the family of Noah came the Mongolians, Tartars and Scythians, those rude barbarians who spread over the steppes of northern Asia. These nomadic people were constantly waging war with each other, and weak tribes often fled before the devastating approach of a stronger to escape destruction. In this manner the vast continent of Asia was gradually traversed until pursued and pursuers reached the extreme limits of the peninsula of Kamtchatka.

Occasionally a multitude of their tribes, dwelling as cultivators of the earth, or migrating in hordes over the grassy steppes of Asia, have been united under the sway of such conquerors as Tamerlane and Genghis Khan. At one time 1,400,000 horsemen marched under the banner of the latter, who boasted that the grass would never grow again in the tracks made by the withering march of his squadrons.

Gibbon, in his "Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," informs us that the hosts of warlike nomads from western Asia, who overran the Roman Empire, were generally Tartar tribes with different names, flying from the invasions of great conquerors who were devastating the central regions of that vast continent, and whose revolutions were only made known to Europe by the swarms of barbarians poured upon her borders, who were escaping from their enemies.

Their weaker enemies had to save themselves by a prompt and abject submission, or by a precipitate flight to regions far beyond their reach. To escape such dangers many of them at different times doubtless crossed the Aleutian Archipelago and Behring's Strait, as the modern Asiatics in Kamtchatka yet do, to North America.

Having reached their destination on the further shore, they would naturally tend toward the South and Southeast, attracted by a climate continually improving in mildness, and a country more fertile and abounding in wild fruit and game, the farther south they proceeded. They seem to have followed one another in different centuries; and those who first found their way to the valleys of the Ohio and lower Mississippi, and to Mexico, came in contact with other races from southeastern Asia, who had preceded them long enough to establish a civilization.

In this manner was the continent of North America peopled, because the Esquimaux or "eaters of raw flesh," for this is the meaning of the word, came also from the extreme northern portion of Asia, having been expelled by their more warlike neighbors, who seemed to have literally wanted them to "get off the earth," for they were dwelling then, as they do now, on the extreme northern edge of it.

Either through choice, or from fear of the red Indians, the Esquimaux spread out along the coast of the Arctic Ocean until their habitat extended from the shores of eastern Greenland to Asia, a length of more than three thousand miles though only a few leagues in breadth. The Esquimaux are a curious and interesting people. They are, moreover, very ingenious and courageous, or they could not subsist in that inhospitable and treeless region of "icy mountains." {FN} They have a swarthy appearance because of their habit of greasing, and never washing their faces; but when once this filth is scrubbed off it is found that they are white, rather than copper-colored, and entirely unlike the North American Indians, being also very short and stout, but fully equal to them in strength and superior in some respects, for while the North American Indians had no domestic animals or beasts of burden when discovered, the Esquimaux had domesticated the reindeer and arctic dog, and yoked them to his sled.

{FN} The author once heard Miss Olof Krarer, "The Little Esquimaux Lady," living then at Ottawa, Illinois, whose age at the time was thirty-eight years; height, 40 inches; weight, 120 pounds. She had been well educated, and her lecture about the manners and customs of her people was intensely interesting. She was born in Greenland, but crossed with her family to Iceland in sledges.

We will now give other evidence in support of our theory. It should be of some significance that the traditions of many of the North American savages point to the Northwest as the direction whence their ancestors migrated originally.