Of the Polar races, whose acquaintance I have made, the reindeer Lapps undoubtedly stand highest; next to them come the Eskimo of Danish Greenland. Both these races are Christian and able to read, and have learned to use and require a large number of the products of agriculture, commerce, and the industrial arts of the present day, as cotton and woollen cloth, tools of forged and cast iron, firearms, coffee, sugar, bread, &c. They are still nomads and hunters, but cannot be called savages; and the educated European who has lived among them for a considerable time commonly acquires a liking for many points of their natural disposition and mode of life. Next to them in civilisation come the Eskimo of North-western America, on whose originally rough life contact with the American whale-fishers appears to have had a very beneficial influence. I form my judgment from the Eskimo tribe at Port Clarence. The members of this tribe were still heathens, but a few of them were far travelled, and had brought home from the Sandwich Islands not only cocoa-nuts and palm mats, but also a trace of the South Sea islander's greater love for ornament and order. Next come the Chukchis, who have as yet come in contact with men of European race to a limited extent, but whose resources appear to have seriously diminished in recent times, in consequence of which the vigour and vitality of the tribe have decreased to a noteworthy extent. Last of all come the Samoyeds, or at least the Samoyeds who inhabit regions bordering on countries inhabited by the Caucasian races; on them the influence of the higher race, with its regulations and ordinances, its merchants, and, above all, its fire-water, has had a distinctly deteriorating effect. [Illustration: SACRIFICIAL EMINENCE ON VAYGATS ISLAND. After a drawing by A. Hovgaard. ] When I once asked an Eskimo in North-western Greenland, known for his excessive self-esteem, whether he would not admit that the Danish Inspector (Governor) was superior to him, I got for answer: "That is not so certain: the Inspector has, it is true, more property, and appears to have more power, but there are people in Copenhagen whom he must obey. I receive orders from none." The same haughty self-esteem one meets with in his host in the "gamma" of the reindeer Lapp, and the skin tent of the Chukchi. In the Samoyed, on the other hand, it appears to have been expelled by a feeling of inferiority and timidity, which in that race has deprived the savage of his most striking characteristics.