Perhaps the untutored Eskimo has the same fear of the dangerous and terrible, the unknown, the infinite, as ourselves, and parts with life just as reluctantly: but it cannot be said that our observation favors the fact of his longevity, although long life seems to prevail among some of the circumpolar tribes, the Laps, for instance, who, according to Scheffer, in spite of hard lives enjoy good health, are long-lived, and still alert at eighty and ninety years.--(De Medecina Laponum.) Owing to his hard life, the conflict with his circumstances and his want of foresight, the Eskimo soon becomes a physiological bankrupt, and his stock of vitality being exhausted, his bodily remains are covered with stones, around which are placed wooden masks and articles that have been useful to him during life, as I have seen at Nounivak island, or they are covered with driftwood as observed in Kotzebue sound, or as at Tapkan, Siberia, where the corpse is lashed to a long pole and is taken some distance from the village, when the clothes are stripped off, placed on the ground and covered with stones. The cadaver is then exposed in the open air to the tender mercies of crows, foxes and wolves. The weapons and other personal effects of the decedent are placed near by, probably with something of the same sentiment that causes us to use chaplets of flowers and immortelles as funeral offerings--a custom that Schiller has commemorated in "Bringet hier die letzen Gaben." The future destiny of these people is a question in which the theologian and politician are not less interested than the man of science. Some observers seem to think that their numbers are diminishing under the evil influence of so-called civilization. But as every race participates in the same moral nature, and the entire history of humanity, according to Herder, is a series of events pointing to a higher destiny than has yet been revealed, there is no reason why the sum of human happiness, under proper auspices, should not be increased among the Innuit race. Arch-deacon Kirkby, a Church of England clergyman who has lately visited them in a missionary capacity as far as Boothia, speaks in the highest terms of their intelligence and capacity for improvement. Here, then, is a brilliant opportunity for some one full of propagandism and charity to repeat the acts of the modern apostles and extend the influence of civilization to the gay, lively, curious and talkative hyperboreans whose home is under the midnight sun and on the borders of the Icy Sea. [Illustration: WRANGEL ISLAND. Journal, American Geographical Society, Vol. XV, 1883. Bulletin N^o. 3. Rosse.] FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: In November, 1882, while in London, I met Mr. Gilder, the _Herald_ correspondent, who accompanied the U.S. ship _Rodgers_, and he showed me this record and paper which he had taken from the cairn during a subsequent visit to the island.] [Footnote 2: De Virginibus velandis. Lutetiae Parisiorum. 1675 f^o., p. 178.]