of
agriculture, commerce, and the industrial arts of the present day, as
cotton and woollen cloth, tools of forged and cast iron, firearms,
coffee, sugar, bread, &c. They are still nomads and hunters, but cannot
be called savages; and the educated European who has lived among them
for a considerable time commonly acquires a liking for many points of
their natural disposition and mode of life. Next to them in civilisation
come the Eskimo of North-western America, on whose originally rough life
contact with the American whale-fishers appears to have had a very
beneficial influence. I form my judgment from the Eskimo tribe at Port
Clarence. The members of this tribe were still heathens, but a few of
them were far travelled, and had brought home from the Sandwich Islands
not only cocoa-nuts and palm mats, but also a trace of the South Sea
islander's greater love for ornament and order. Next come the Chukchis,
who have as yet come in contact with men of European race to a limited
extent, but whose resources appear to have seriously diminished in
recent times, in consequence of which the vigour and vitality of the
tribe have decreased to a noteworthy extent. Last of all come the
Samoyeds, or at least the Samoyeds who inhabit regions bordering on
countries inhabited by the Caucasian races; on them the influence of the
higher race, with its regulations and ordinances, its merchants, and,
above all, its fire-water, has had a distinctly deteriorating effect.

[Illustration: SACRIFICIAL EMINENCE ON VAYGATS ISLAND. After a drawing
by A. Hovgaard. ]

When I once asked an Eskimo in North-western Greenland, known for
his excessive self-esteem, whether he would not admit that the
Danish Inspector (Governor) was superior to him, I got for answer:
"That is not so certain: the Inspector has, it is true, more
property, and appears to have more power, but there are people in
Copenhagen whom he must obey. I receive orders from none." The same
haughty self-esteem one meets with in his host in the "gamma" of the
reindeer Lapp, and the skin tent of the Chukchi. In the Samoyed, on
the other hand, it appears to have been expelled by a feeling of
inferiority and timidity, which in that race has deprived the savage
of his most striking characteristics.

I knew from old travels and from my own experience on Yalmal, that
another sort of gods, and one perhaps inferior to those which Anna
Petrovna pulled out of her old boot, was to be found set up