intercourse. They trade with the Indians, with the fur companies, the
whalers and among themselves across Bering straits. Many of them are
veritable Shylocks, having a through comprehension of the axiom in
political economy regarding the regulation of the price of a thing by
the demand.

[Illustration: _No. 7._]


THE MORAL SENSE AND THE RELIGIOUS INSTINCT.

With the aptitudes and instincts of our common humanity Eskimo morals,
as manifested in truth, right and virtue, also admit of remark. Except
where these people have had the bad example of the white man, whose
vices they have imitated, not on account of defective moral nature, but
because they saw few or no virtues, they are models of truthfulness and
honesty. In fact their virtues in this respect are something phenomenal.
The same cannot be said, however, for their sexual morals, which, as a
rule, are the contrary of good. Even a short stay among the hyperboreans
causes one to smile at Lord Kames's "frigidity of the North Americans,"
and at the fallacy of Herder who says, "the blood of man near the pole
circulates but slowly, the heart beats but languidly; consequently the
married live chastely, the women almost require compulsion to take upon
them the troubles of a married life," etc. Nearly the same idea
expressed by Montesquieu, and repeated by Byron in "happy the nations of
the moral North," are statements so at variance with our experience that
this fact must alone excuse a reference to the subject. So far are they
from applying to the people in question that it is only necessary to
mention, without going into detail, that the women are freely offered to
strangers by way of hospitality, showing a decided preference for white