are faithful
unto death. Without religion and having no idea of God, they will share
their last meal with any one who is hungry, while the aged and the
helpless among them are taken care of as a matter of course. They are
healthy and pure-blooded; they have no vices, no intoxicants, and no bad
habits--not even gambling. Altogether, they are a people unique upon the
face of the earth. A friend of mine well calls them the philosophic
anarchists of the North.

I have been studying the Eskimos for eighteen years and no more
effective instruments for arctic work could be imagined than these
plump, bronze-skinned, keen-eyed and black-maned children of nature.
Their very limitations are their most valuable endowments for the
purposes of arctic work. I have a sincere interest in these people,
aside from their usefulness to me; and my plan from the beginning has
been to give them such aid and instruction as would fit them more
effectively to cope with their own austere environment, and to refrain
from teaching them anything which would tend to weaken their
self-confidence or to make them discontented with their lot.

The suggestions of some well-meaning persons that they be transported to
a more hospitable region would, if carried out, cause their
extermination in two or three generations. Our variable climate they
could not endure, as they are keenly susceptible to pulmonary and
bronchial affections. Our civilization, too, would only soften and
corrupt them, as their racial inheritance is one of physical hardship;
while to our complex environment they could not adjust themselves
without losing the very childlike qualities which constitute their chief
virtues. To Christianize them would be quite impossible; but the
cardinal graces of faith, hope, and charity they seem to have already,
for without them they could never survive the six-months' night and the
many rigors of their home.

Their feeling for me is a blending of gratitude and confidence. To
understand what my gifts have meant to them, imagine a philanthropic
millionaire descending upon an American country town and offering every
man there a brownstone mansion and an unlimited bank account. But even
this comparison falls short of the reality, for in the United States
even the poorest boy knows that there is a possibility of his attaining
for himself those things on which he sets his heart, if he will labor
and endure, while to the Eskimos the things which I have given