One sole population inhabits the immense icy plains which extend into America even beyond the Polar circle. I refer to the Eskimos, who are found--encamped in summer under tents made of reindeer or seal-skin, hidden in winter in their snow-huts--from Behring's Strait even to Cape Farewell. This race has the reddish-brown tint of the North American Indians. In its small stature and physical forms it does not differ from other Hyperboreans; but in physiognomy and the flattened skull it singularly recalls the men of lofty stature who inhabit the other extremity of the American continent, the Patagonians. The physiognomy, the character, and the manners of the Eskimos have been frequently described. The courageous navigators who have explored the Polar Sea in quest of a North-west Passage have held frequent intercourse with these poor people, and all agree in eulogizing their gentleness, their patriarchal life, their eagerness to succour strangers. An American, Captain Hall, the last adventurer who has set himself the task of discovering the wrecks of Franklin's ill-fated expedition, spent a whole year in the midst of the Eskimos, whose amiability and generosity he praises in no stinted terms. Exclusively hunters and fishers, the Eskimos have no other domestic animal than the dog; they harness it to their sledges, and also train it to chase the seal, the walrus, and the reindeer. It is in the summer only that they hunt the latter animal. In that genial season there is no lack of other game, terrestrial and marine. It is for them a season of abundance, wherein they gorge themselves with flesh, blood, and fat. During the winter they often fast several days at a time, and remain immured in their huts like hybernating animals; but at length, driven by famine and by want of oil, they go forth upon the ice in search of the seals which come up to breathe. When they have been fortunate enough to kill one, they divide it amongst them amicably, and regale themselves upon it until only the bones remain, after which they endure a new period of privation. Thus they live from day to day, in continual alternations of gluttony and abstinence, without injury to their health, and without shortening their lives. And it is worthy of notice that Europeans who once consent to adopt this regime--to drink the warm blood and eat the raw flesh and fat of seals--soon accept of it without the slightest repugnance, and become capable of enduring, like true Hyperboreans, the terrible cold of the long Polar winters. * * * * *