Their sky is famous for its beautiful auroral display—gorgeous pyrotechnics of nature—in the long, chill winter night, when a brilliant arch spans the heavens from east to west, marked with oscillating hues of yellow, blue, green, and violet, rendering everything light as day for a few moments, then falling back into darkness. So off the coast of Norway among the Lofoden Islands, the hardy men who pursue the cod-fishery in that region, during the winter season, depend upon the Aurora Borealis to light their midnight labor, that being considered the most favorable hour of the twenty-four to secure the fish. Without this nocturnal meteoric illumination, it would be darkness indeed in the polar regions for half the year. This phenomenon in its Arctic development is so much intensified as to quite belittle the exhibition with which we are familiar in New England, and which is called the Northern Lights. It is certainly very odd that these boreal natives, the Eskimos proper, should have precisely the same mode of salutation which the New Zealand Maoris practice, though they are separated by so many thousand miles of ocean, namely, the rubbing of noses together between two persons who desire to evince pleasure at meeting. No matter how oily the Eskimo’s nose may be, or however dirty the Maori’s face, to decline this mode of salutation when offered is to give mortal offense, either in tropical New Zealand or in arctic Alaska, at Point Barrow or at Ohinemutu. “The home of the Eskimos,” says Bancroft, in his excellent work on the natives of the Pacific coast, “is a model of filth and freeness. Coyness is not one of their vices, nor is modesty ranked among their virtues. The latitude of innocency characterizes all their social relations; they refuse to do nothing in public that they would do in private.” They seem to live in a primitive state, without craving anything of the white man’s possessions, except tobacco and rum, which are smuggled to them by contrabandists, who come on to the coast to trade for furs and ivory. This class of traders, sailing from San Francisco, and stopping at the Hawaiian Islands to procure a few hogsheads of the vilest intoxicant which is made, pass along the northern coast of Alaska, touching at certain places where they are expected annually. The walrus not only supplies the Eskimo with food, but its tusks are used as the common currency among them, and are secured in considerable quantities by the illicit traders. The encroachment of unscrupulous contrabandists renders the utter extinction of the walrus only a question of time. It is to be regretted that the wholesale slaughter of this animal cannot be prevented. If this could be brought about, as in the instance of the fur-seal, we might continue to get ivory from the shores of the Frozen Sea for all time. The natural enemy of the walrus is the polar bear, but his most relentless pursuer is man.