to sketch one of the party, and taking one
of our note-books and a pencil, neither of which he ever had in his hand
before, produced the accompanying likeness of Professor Muir:

[Illustration]

At Saint Michael's there is an Eskimo boy who draws remarkably well,
having taught himself by copying from the _Illustrated London News_. He
made a correct pen-and-ink drawing of the _Corwin_, and another of the
group of buildings at Saint Michael's, which, though creditable in many
respects, had the defect of many Chinese pictures, being faulty in
perspective. As these drawings equal those in Dr. Rink's book, done by
Greenland artists, I regret my inability to reproduce them here. As
evidences of culture they show more advancement than the carvings of
English rustics that a clergyman has caused to be placed on exhibition
at the Kensington Museum.

Sir John Ross speaks highly of his interpreter as an artist; Beechy says
that the knowledge of the coast obtained by him from Innuit maps was of
the greatest value, while Hall and others show their geographical
knowledge to be as perfect as that possible of attainment by civilized
men unaided by instruments. I had frequent opportunities to observe
these Eskimo ideas of chartography. They not only understood reading a
chart of the coast when showed to them, but would make tracings of the
unexplored part, as I knew a native to do in the case of an Alaskan
river, the mouth only of which was laid down on our chart.

Manifestation of the plastic art, which is found among tribes less
intelligent, is rare among the Eskimo. In fact, the only thing of the
kind seen was some rude pottery at Saint Lawrence island, the design of
which showed but crude development of ornamental ideas. The same state
of advancement was shown in some drinking cups carved from mammoth ivory
and a dipper made from the horn of a mountain sheep.

COMBATIVENESS.

In one of the acts of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages" the Eskimo plays a very
unimportant _role_. Perhaps in no other race is the combative instinct
less predominant; in none is quarrelling, fierceness of disposition, and
jealousy more conspicuously absent, and in none does the desire for the
factitious renown of war exist in a more rudimentary and undeveloped
state. Perhaps the constant fight with cold and hunger is a compensation
which must account for the absence of such unmitigated evils as war,
taxes, complex social organization and hierarchy among the