Lord Esher was succeeded in the title by his only surviving son, Reginald Baliol Brett (b. 1852), who was secretary to the office of works from 1895 to 1902, but subsequently came into far greater public prominence in 1904 as Chairman of the war office reconstitution committee after the South African War.
ESHER, a township in the Epsom parliamentary division of Surrey, England, 14½ m. S.W. of London by the London & South Western railway (Esher and Claremont station). It is pleasantly situated on rising ground above the river Mole, 3 m. from its junction with the Thames. To the north-west lie the grounds of Esher Place. Of the mansion-house founded by William of Waynflete, bishop of Winchester (c. 1450), in which Cardinal Wolsey resided for three or four weeks after his sudden fall from power in 1529, only the gatehouse remains. It is known as Wolsey’s Tower, but is apparently part of Waynflete’s foundation. A new mansion was erected in 1803. To the south is Claremont Palace, built by the great Lord Clive (1769) on the site of a mansion of Sir John Vanbrugh. In 1816 it was the residence of Princess Charlotte, wife of Prince (afterwards King) Leopold. She died here in 1817, and on the death of her husband in 1865 the property passed to the crown. Louis Philippe, ex-king of the French, resided here from 1848 until his death in 1850. In 1882 Claremont became the private property of Queen Victoria. Christ Church, Esher, contains fine memorials of King Leopold and others, and one of its three bells is said to have been brought from San Domingo by Sir Francis Drake. To the north near the railway station is Sandown Park, where important race meetings are held. Esher is included in the urban district of Esher and The Dittons, of which Thames Ditton is a favourite riverside resort. The whole district is largely residential. Pop. (1901) 9489.
ESKER (O. Irish eiscir), a local name for long mounds of glacial gravel frequently met with in Ireland. Eskers (the Swedish åsar) are among the occasionally puzzling relics of the British glacial period. They wind from side to side across glaciated country and have evidently been formed by channels upon or under the ice. “Where streams of considerable size form tunnels under or in the ice these may become more or less filled with wash, and when the ice melts the aggraded channels appear as long ridges of gravel and sand known as eskers. It has been thought that similar ridges are sometimes formed in valleys cut in the ice from top to bottom, and even that they rise from gravel and sand lodged in super-glacial channels. The latter at least is probably rare, as the surface streams have usually high gradients, swift currents and smooth bottoms, and hence give little opportunity for lodgment. In the case of ice-sheets, too, in which eskers are chiefly developed, there is usually no surface material except at the immediate edge, where the ice is thin and its layers upturned” (T.C. Chamberlin and R.D. Salisbury, Geology, Processes and their Results). Eskers are to be distinguished from kames (q.v.).
ESKILSTUNA, a town of Sweden in the district (län) of Södermanland, on the Hjelmar river, which unites lakes Hjelmar and Mälar, 65 m. W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,663. The place is mentioned in the 13th century, and is said to derive its name from Eskil, an English missionary who suffered martyrdom on the spot. It rose into importance in the reign of Charles X., who bestowed on it considerable privileges, and gave the first impulse to its manufacturing activity. It is the chief seat in Sweden of the iron and steel industries, its cutlery being especially noted, while damascened work is a specialty. There is a technical school for the metal industries. There are, in the town or its neighbourhood, great engineering, gun-making, and rolling and polishing works and breweries. The largest mechanical works are those of Munktell and Tunafors. The Karl Gustaf Stads rifle factory was established in 1814.
ESKIMO, Eskimos or Esquimaux (a corruption of the Abnaki Indian Eskimantsic or the Ojibway Ashkimeq, both terms meaning “those who eat raw flesh”: they call themselves “Innuit,” “the people”), a North American Indian people, inhabiting the arctic coast of America from Greenland to Alaska, and a small portion of the Asiatic shore of Bering Strait. On the American shores they are found, in broken tribes, from East Greenland to the western shores of Alaska—never far inland, or south of the region where the winter ice allows seals to congregate. Even on hunting expeditions they never travel more than 30 m. from the coast. Save a slight admixture of European settlers, they are the only inhabitants of both sides of Davis Strait and Baffin Bay. They extend as far south as about 50° N. lat. on the eastern side of America, and in the west to 60° on the eastern shore of Bering Strait, while 55° to 60° are their southern limits on the shore of Hudson Bay. Throughout all this range there are no other tribes save where the Kennayan and Ugalenze Indians (of western America) come down to the shore to fish. The Aleutians are closely allied to the Eskimo in habits and language. H.J. Rink divides the Eskimo into the following groups, the most eastern of which would have to travel nearly 5000 m. to reach the most western: (1) The East Greenland Eskimo, few in number, every year advancing farther south, and coming into contact with the next section. (2) The West Greenlanders, civilized, living under the Danish crown, and extending from Cape Farewell to 74° N. lat. (3) The Northern-most Greenlanders—the Arctic Highlanders of Sir John Ross—confined to Smith, Whale, Murchison and Wolstenholme Sounds, north of the Melville Bay glaciers. These—the most isolated and uncivilized of all the Eskimo—had no boats or bows and arrows until about 1868. (4) The Labrador Eskimo, mostly civilized. (5) The Eskimo of the middle regions, occupying the coasts from Hudson Bay to Barter Island, beyond Mackenzie river, inhabiting a stretch of country 2000 m. in length and 800 in breadth. (6) The Western Eskimo, from Barter Island to the western limits in America. (7) The Asiatic Eskimo.
The Eskimo are not a tall race, their height varying from 5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 10 in., but men of 6 ft. are met. Both men and women are muscular and active, the former often inclining to fat. The faces of both have a pleasing, good-humoured expression, and not infrequently are even handsome. The typical face is broadly oval, flat, with fat cheeks; forehead not high, and rather retreating; teeth good, though, owing to the character of the food, worn down to the gums in old age; nose very flat; eyes rather obliquely set, small, black and bright; head largish, and covered with coarse black hair, which the women fasten up into a knot on the top, and the men clip in front and allow to hang loose and unkempt behind. Their skulls are of the mesocephalic type, the height being greater than the breadth; according to Davis, 75 is the index of the latter and 77 of the former. Some of the tribes slightly compress the skulls of their new-born children laterally (Hall), but this practice is a very local one. The men have usually a slight moustache, but no whiskers, and rarely any beard. The skin has generally a “bacony” feel, and when cleaned of the smoke, grease and other dirt—the accumulation of which varies according to the age of the individual—is only so slightly brown that red shows in the cheeks of the children and young women. The hands and feet are small and well formed. The Eskimo dress entirely in skins of the seal, reindeer, bear, dog, or even fox, the first two being, however, the most common. The men’s and women’s dress is much the same, a jacket suit, the trousers tucked into seal-skin boots. The jacket has a hood, which in cold weather is used to cover the head, leaving only the face exposed. The women’s jacket has a large hood for carrying a child and an absurd-looking tail behind, which is, however, usually tucked up. The women’s trousers are usually ornamented with eider-duck neck feathers or embroidery of native dyed leather; their boots, which are of white leather, or (in Greenland) dyed of various colours, reach over the knees, and in some tribes are very wide at the top, thus giving them an awkward appearance and a clumsy waddling walk. In winter two suits are worn, one with the hair inside, the other with it outside. They also sometimes wear shirts of bird-skins, and stockings of dog or young reindeer skins. Their clothes are very neatly made, fit beautifully, and are sewn with “sinew-thread,” with a bone needle if a steel one cannot be had. In person the Eskimo are usually filthy, and never wash. Infants are, however, sometimes cleaned by being licked by their mother before being put into the bag of feathers which serves as their bed, cradle and blankets.