In respect, too, to stature, the Eskimo is less remarkable for inferiority than is generally supposed. His bulky, baggy dress makes him look square and short. Measurements, however, correct this impression. Men of the height of five feet ten inches have been noticed as particular specimens—better grown individuals than their fellows. And men under five feet have also been noticed for the contrary reasons. Numerous measurements, however, give about five feet as the height of an Eskimo woman, and five feet six inches as that of a man. This is more than so good an authority as Mr. Crawfurd gives to the Malays; whose person is squat, and whose average stature does not exceed five feet three or four inches. It is more, too, than Sir R. Schomburgk[236] gives the Guiana Indians, as may be seen from the following table:—

Wapisianas.Tarumas.Mawackas.Atorais.Macusis.
Aged.ft.in.Aged.ft.in.Aged.ft.in.Aged.ft.in.Aged.ft.in.
12485⁄10144113⁄101541035515⁄1014}48
154616}495⁄10155115
16511⁄10171450

It is more than the average of several other populations.

Neither is the Eskimo skull so wholly different from the American. It is, probably, larger in its dimensions; so that its cavity contains more cubic inches. The measurements, however, which suggest this view, are but few. On the other hand, the relations between the width and the depth of the skull, are considered important and distinctive.

By width is meant the number of inches from side to side, from one parietal bone to the other; in other words, the parietal diameter.

Depth signifies the length of the occipito-frontal diameter, or the number of inches from the forehead to the back of the skull.

Now, in one out of four of the Eskimo crania examined by Dr. Morton, the parietal diameter so nearly approaches the occipito-frontal as for the skull in question to be as much as 5·4 inches in width, and as little as 5·7 in depth;[237] a measurement which makes the Eskimo brain almost as broad as it is long. Valeat quantum. It is an extreme specimen. The remainder are as 5·5 to 7·3; as 5·1 to 7·5; and as 5 to 6·7, proportions by no means exclusively Eskimo, and proportions which occur in very many of the undeniably American stocks.

Likeness there is; and variety there is;—likeness in physical feature, likeness in language, and likeness in the general moral and intellectual characteristics. And then there is variety—variety in all the details of their arts; variety in their bows, their canoes, their dwellings, their fashions in the way of incisions and tattooings, and their fashions in the dressing of their hair.

This is as much as can be said about the Eskimo at present. It is, however, preparatory to the general statement that all the remaining Indians of British North America recede from the Sioux and Iroquois type, and approach that of the family in question. Such, indeed, has been the case, though (perhaps) in a less degree, with one of the classes already considered—the Athabaskan.

The Kolúch.—The extreme west of the British possessions beyond the Rocky Mountains, north of latitude 55° is but imperfectly known. Indeed, for scientific, and, perhaps, for political purposes as well, the country is unfortunately divided. The Russians have the long but narrow[238] strip of coast; and, consequently, limit their investigations to its bays and archipelagoes. The British, on the contrary, though they possess the interior, have no great interest in the parts about the Russian boundary. In the way of trade, they are not sufficiently on the sea for the sea-otter, nor near enough the mountains for other fur-bearing animals.