th; and they
live on, apparently happy and contented with their hard life and
uncongenial environment. Where the white man begins to be uncomfortable,
the Eskimo begins to be at home. Where the white man leaves off the
Eskimo begins, and his haunts penetrate away into the far north--into
the land of perpetual ice and snow. Where we go only to explore he
builds his permanent abode.

But this is not a history of the geographical distribution of men; it is
to be the story of an Eskimo who went astray according to the moral
ideals of his immediate tribesmen.

Once upon a time there lived in this northland of which we have been
speaking a young native who had mysteriously arrived at the conclusion
that the life of an Eskimo was a very narrow and fruitless existence
indeed, and that the conditions under which they lived were totally
inadequate to supply the demands of a twentieth century human being. In
the midst of the other members of the family he assumed an attitude of
weariness and contempt for his associates and environs. "One may as well
associate with a polar bear," he soliloquized. "Man was made to
accomplish things; the Eskimo is no further advanced in the scale of
living, organic beings, to all intent and purpose, than the polar bear,
or the walrus. He is born, lives, eats, sleeps, hunts, kills, dies, and
is buried in the cold frozen earth, if he does not fall through a hole
in the ice into the bottomless sea. To the south of us is a great
healthy world where men live; where they have discovered all that the
world has to give, and where they enjoy those things to the utmost;
where they read and write and take records of their doings. Me for the
south!" he shouted, and he made up his mind to migrate at the first
opportunity and be in the swim with men. "I must learn to read and
write and think, even if I have to forget my own language," he declared.

Now, it came to pass that as he was soliloquizing as above one morning,
a girl appeared before him. She was so muffled up in furs that only an
Eskimo could distinguish whether the bundle was male or female. She sat
down beside him and placed her short, stubby, muffled arm as far around
his neck as it would go, and in this attitude she coaxed, and begged,
and prayed, and argued with him, thinking that she might resurrect him
to himself again. But when she found that his mania was for the south,
she wept as only woman can weep the whole world over, even in the far
nort