The Eskimo, though occasionally tall, are as a rule stumpy and
thickset, with very small hands and feet, broad faces, and projecting
cheekbones, a narrow nose without the aquiline bridge of the
Amerindian, slanting narrow eyes, and long heads containing large
well-developed brains. In disposition the Eskimo are nearly always
merry, affectionate to one another, honest, and modest. Modern
travellers in the Arctic regions give them invariably a high
character; but Frobisher, Davis, and the explorers of the sixteenth
and seventeenth centuries accused them of treachery and an inclination
to steal. Iron in any shape or form they could hardly resist taking.
Moreover, if they are the same people as the Skraellings of the Norse
traditions they must have been of a fiercer disposition a thousand
years ago.
The Amerindians who inhabited (more or less) the rest of the Canadian
Dominion, and the whole remainder of the New World, differed in
physical appearance from the Eskimo mainly in being taller and better
proportioned, with shorter and rounder heads, larger, fuller eyes, a
bigger nose, and a handsomer personal appearance. The skin colour, as
a rule, was darker and browner than the greyish- or pinkish-yellow of
the Eskimo.
The various human types that went to form the Amerindian race (beside
the Eskimo element in them) seem to have entered north-west America
from Asia, and first to have peopled the Pacific slopes of the Rocky
Mountains, after which they wandered farther and farther south till
they got into a warmer climate.
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