c.

If the foregoing means for estimating the mental grasp and capacity for
improvement be correct, then we must accord to the most northern nation
of the globe a fair degree of brain energy--potential though it be.
Aside from the mere physical methods of determining the degree of
intelligence, it is urged by some writers, among them the historian
Robertson, that tact in commerce and correct ideas of property are
evidence of a considerable progress toward civilization. The natural
inference from this is that they are tests of intellectual power, since
mind is a combination of all the actual and possible states of
consciousness of the organism, and an examination of the Eskimo system
of trade draws its own conclusion. Their fondness for trade has been
known for a long time, as well as the extended range of their commercial
intercourse. They trade with the Indians, with the fur companies, the
whalers and among themselves across Bering straits. Many of them are
veritable Shylocks, having a through comprehension of the axiom in
political economy regarding the regulation of the price of a thing by
the demand.

[Illustration: _No. 7._]

THE MORAL SENSE AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT.

With the aptitudes and instincts of our common humanity Eskimo morals,
as manifested in truth, right and virtue, also admit of remark. Except
where these people have had the bad example of the white man, whose
vices they have imitated, not on account of defective moral nature, but
because they saw few or no virtues, they are models of truthfulness and
honesty. In fact their virtues in this respect are something phenomenal.
The same cannot be said, however, for their sexual morals, which, as a
rule, are the contrary of good. Even a short stay among the hyperboreans
causes one to smile at Lord Kames's "frigidity of the North Americans,"
and at the fallacy of Herder who says, "the blood of man near the pole
circulates but slowly, the heart beats but languidly; consequently the
married live chastely, the women almost require compulsion to take upon
them the troubles of a married life," etc. Nearly the same idea
expressed by Montesquieu, and repeated by Byron in "happy the nations of
the moral North," are statements so at variance with our experience that
this fact must alone excuse a reference to the subject. So far are they
from applying to the people in question that it is only necessary to
mention, without going into detail, that the women are