The verb has participles and tenses, which have many modifications of meaning with no equivalent except an entire sentence in English. In narration, there is an extraordinarily graphic past, not adequately rendered by “When So-and-So lived;” but “in So-and-So’s own time of being in the world.” There are impersonal verbs, and irregular verbs, and all sorts of particles; potential (I can do a thing), optative (I wish to do it), negative (I do not do it), the proper “sorting out” of which is half the battle of learning Eskimo. Time is expressed by time particles placed between the verb and the verbal termination; there are also verbal and adverbial particles which have fixed rules as to position, always preceding the time particle. Thus, a word may be elaborated, such as Tikkenarsuakpok, “He-endeavours-to-arrive,” or Tikkenarsuatsinakpok, “He-endeavours-always-to-arrive;” and “I-indeed-hear-you,” or “I-indeed-hear-only-you.” It would be perhaps superfluous to offer further notes on the Eskimo tongue, since the foregoing will suffice to give some idea of its scope and complexity. The syntax falls under two headings, the formation of compound words and the arrangement of these into sentences. The position of words in a sentence, particularly a short one, may be changed without altering the sense. It is no part of the present writer’s purpose to do more, here, than to sketch the briefest outline of one whole section of his subject. To do justice to this language would require very considerable space. Again, there is no particular object in adding a chart of the syllabic characters, which are purely arbitrary, have no history beyond that already given, and belong in no sense to the genius of the Eskimo themselves. The only recommendation they might have—if the general reader could pronounce them—is that they far more nearly give the sounds of what is really a flowing and not unmusical tongue than the barbaric conglomeration of outlandish consonants and double vowels which, as a poor expedient, represent to the eye only, Eskimo words in our inadequate letters. It is for this reason that we have so often given, in the foregoing pages, only the translation and not the Eskimo words themselves. In Roman characters they convey a hideous idea to the eye, and a still worse idea to the ear.