3. The difficulties presented by the Eskimo language.
It is only these two last reasons to which I attribute much validity. The first of the three I put low in the way of an objection; i. e., not much higher than I put the systems founded upon the Icelandic and Welsh traditions, the drifting of Japanese junks, and the effects of winds and currents upon Polynesian canoes. Without, at present, doubting whether the occurrences here alluded to have happened since America was peopled by the present race, I limit myself to an expression of dissent from the doctrine that by any such unsatisfactory processes the original population found its way: in other words, I believe that our only choice lies between the doctrine that makes the American nations to have originated from one or more separate pairs of progenitors, and the doctrine that either Behring's Straits or the line of Islands between Kamskatka and the Peninsula of Aliaska, was the highway between the two worlds—from Asia to America, or vice versâ. I say vice versâ, since it by no means follows that, because Asia and America shall have been peopled by the same race, the original of that race must, necessarily, have arisen in Asia; inasmuch as the statement that the descendants of the same pair peopled two continents, taken alone, proves nothing as to the particular continent in which that pair first appeared. Against America, and in favour of Asia being the birthplace of the Human Race—its unity being assumed—I know many valid reasons; reasons valid enough and numerous enough to have made the notion of New World being the oldest of two a paradox. Nevertheless, I know no absolutely conclusive ones.
Omitting, however, this question, the chief primâ facie objections to the view that America was peopled from North-eastern Asia, lie in the—
1. Physical differences between the Eskimo and the American Indian.—Stunted as he is in stature, the Eskimo is essentially a Mongol in physiognomy. His nose is flattened, his cheek-bones project, his eyes are often oblique, and his skin is more yellow and brown than red or copper-coloured. On the other hand, in his most typical form, the American Indian is not Mongol in physiognomy. With the same black straight hair, he has an aquiline nose, a prominent profile, and a skin more red or copper-coloured than either yellow or brown. Putting this along with other marked characteristics, moral as well as physical, it is not surprising that the American should have been taken as the type and sample of a variety in contrast with the Mongolian.
2. Philological arguments.—Few languages, equally destitute of literature, have been better or longer known than the Eskimo. For this we have to thank the Danish missionaries of Greenland—Egede, most especially. From the grammar of Fabricius, the Eskimo was soon known to be a language of long compound words, and of regular, though remarkable, inflections. It was known, too, to be very unlike the better-known languages of Europe and Asia. Finally, it has been admitted to be, in respect to its grammatical structure at least, American.
So much for the ethnographical philology of the Eskimo language as determined by its grammatical structure; upon which we may notice the remarkable antagonism of the two tests. Physically, the Eskimo is a Mongol and Asiatic. Philologically, he is American—at least in respect to the principles upon which his speech is constructed.
And now we may examine the details of the geographical area occupied by the Eskimo. Its direction is double.
From east to west (or vice versâ) it runs along the shores of the Arctic Sea, in a line of irregular breadth; a line which is either wholly continuous or else broken at one point only—a point which will be noticed in the sequel. On the coast of the Atlantic the line widens, and in Greenland it attains its maximum breadth.
From north to south it equally keeps the line of coast, extending to irregular distances inland, but rarely very far.
However, between the direction in latitude, and the direction in longitude, as this distribution of the Eskimo area may be called, there is a difference which is a very important one. The Eskimos of the Atlantic are not only easily distinguished from the tribes of American aborigines which lie to the south or west of them, and with which they come in contact, but they stand in strong contrast and opposition to them—a contrast and opposition exhibited equally in appearance, manners, language, and one which has had full justice done to it by those who have written on the subject.