* * * * * In 1818 Captain John Ross, R.N., in an attempt to discover the northwest passage, though verifying the discredited discoveries of Baffin in 1616, failed in his special effort. However, he added a new people to the knowledge of the world through meeting in the neighborhood of Cape York, Baffin Bay, eight of the Inuits, now known as the Etah or Cape York Eskimos, whom he fancifully designated as the Arctic Highlanders. Elisha Kent Kane was the first to have familiar relations with and give detailed information about these isolated natives, the tribe in 1854 consisting of one hundred and forty persons. In later years the Etahs have been frequently visited by explorers, whalers, and hunters. As the most northerly inhabitants of the world at the present time, they naturally have engaged the earnest attention of all who have met these hardy, kindly, and resourceful people. Kane's fear of their extinction was groundless, as against the number of one hundred and forty, given by him, Peary's census figures of 1897 show two hundred and thirty-four, an increase of ninety-four in forty years. Rasmussen relates that within the memory of man, but evidently since Kane's time, fourteen Eskimos from the region of Baffin Land have joined the Etah natives. It is reasonable to believe that the origin of the Cape York Eskimo was through similar migrations probably two or three centuries earlier. Prior to the nineteenth century practically the only known Eskimo people of Greenland consisted of those under Danish protection, who occupied the entire ice-free west coast from Cape Farewell 60 deg. N. to Tasiusak, 73 deg. 24' N. Traditions of the existence of tribes of natives on the east coast have long prevailed, but up to the nineteenth century there were known only a few individuals, quite near Farewell, which were visited by Wallo in 1752.