The best quality of material and labour were put into the ship, and it was believed and has since been proven that she is the ablest ship ever built for Arctic exploration. CHAPTER XVII MY ESKIMOS[5] Plump and rounded figures, emphatically expressive countenances, bronze-skinned, keen-eyed, black-maned inhabitants of an icy desert; simple and honest, occasionally sulky; wandering, homeless people: these are my children, the Eskimos. Footnote 5: For portions of this chapter taken from Peary’s “Northward,” the courtesy of the Frederick A. Stokes Company is hereby gratefully acknowledged. Their origin, no one can tell to a certainty; but their appearance indicates the strong probability of the correctness of the theory advanced by Sir Clements Markham, distinguished President of the Royal Geographical Society of London, that these people are remnants of an ancient Siberian tribe, the Onkilon. Many of them are of strikingly Mongolian type of countenance. What first impresses one is their inquisitiveness. Dr. Hayes records the case of an Eskimo woman who had subjected herself to a temperature of thirty-five degrees below zero, with the liability to be caught in a gale; she had travelled forty miles over a track, the roughness of which frequently compelled her to dismount from the sledge and walk; she had carried her child all the way; her sole motive being her curiosity to see the white men, their igloo (hut), and their strange treasures. Imagine, then, the arrival of a box—which most probably in a civilised community, would be looked upon as a cartload of rubbish. Placed within the vision of the unspoiled Eskimo, it becomes transformed into Dantes’s grotto filled with “such stuff as dreams are made of.” With fox-like inquisitiveness, the object is approached. Each article is touched, felt and examined; and later, as the “village gossips” get together, we listen to the cheery verboseness of “Sairy Gamp” and Megipsu, discussing the riches of the _Koblunah_ (white man). In a country where men, women and children exist in complete isolation, where vegetation, mineral matter and even so common a thing as salt are unknown—the people’s capacity for imitation would ordinarily be wholly a matter of conjecture; but when brought in contact with my expedition the Eskimos have shown wonderful characteristics of Oriental imitation and adaptation. If given a gun, a hatchet, or a knife as a model they will reproduce these in miniature, in walrus ivory, with a faithfulness and accuracy that seems almost startling in view of their tools and previous lack of training. The men also pick up with great ease and celerity the use of the tools of the blacksmith and the carpenter.