This question of the identification of the Skrælings, or natives, whether of Nova Scotia or New England, is one of considerable ethnographic significance. The speculations relative to the possible relationship of the Eskimo to the post-glacial cave-dwellers of the Dordogne valley, and their consequent direct descent from palæolithic European man, confer a value on any definite evidence bearing on their movements in intermediate centuries. On the other hand, the approximate correspondence of the Huron-Iroquois of Canada and the state of New York to the Eskimo in the dolichocephalic type of skull common to both, gives an interest to any evidence of the early presence of the latter to the south of the St. Lawrence. In their western migrations the Eskimo attract the attention of the ethnographer as the one definite ethnic link between America and Asia. They are met with, as detached and wandering tribes, across the whole continent, from Greenland to Behring Strait. Nevertheless, they appear to be the occupants of a diminishing rather than an expanding area. This would accord with the idea of their area extending over the Canadian maritime provinces, and along the New England coast, in the eleventh century; and possibly as indicating the early home, from which they were being driven northward by the Huron-Iroquois or other assailants, rather than implying an overflow from their Arctic habitat. Seal hunting on the coast of Newfoundland, and fishing on its banks and along the shores of Nova Scotia, would even now involve no radical change in the habits of the Eskimo. It was with this hyperborean race that the Scandinavian colonists of Greenland came in contact 800 years ago, and by them that they were exterminated at a later date. If it could be proved that the Skrælings of the eleventh century, found by the Northmen on the American mainland, were Eskimo, it would furnish the most conclusive evidence that the red Indians—whether Micmac, Millicet, or Hurons,—are recent intruders there.