chart of the coast when showed to them, but would make tracings of the
unexplored part, as I knew a native to do in the case of an Alaskan
river, the mouth only of which was laid down on our chart.

Manifestation of the plastic art, which is found among tribes less
intelligent, is rare among the Eskimo. In fact, the only thing of the
kind seen was some rude pottery at Saint Lawrence island, the design of
which showed but crude development of ornamental ideas. The same state
of advancement was shown in some drinking cups carved from mammoth ivory
and a dipper made from the horn of a mountain sheep.


COMBATIVENESS.

In one of the acts of Shakespeare's "Seven Ages" the Eskimo plays a very
unimportant _rôle_. Perhaps in no other race is the combative instinct
less predominant; in none is quarrelling, fierceness of disposition, and
jealousy more conspicuously absent, and in none does the desire for the
factitious renown of war exist in a more rudimentary and undeveloped
state. Perhaps the constant fight with cold and hunger is a compensation
which must account for the absence of such unmitigated evils as war,
taxes, complex social organization and hierarchy among the curious
people of the icy north. The pursuits of peace and of simple patriarchal
lives, notwithstanding the fact of much in connection therewith that is
wretched, and forbidding to a civilized man, seem to beget in these
people a degree of domestic tranquility and contentment which, united to
their light-hearted and cheery disposition, is an additional reason for
believing the sum of human happiness to be constant throughout the
world.