of foresight, the Eskimo soon becomes a physiological bankrupt, and his
stock of vitality being exhausted, his bodily remains are covered with
stones, around which are placed wooden masks and articles that have
been useful to him during life, as I have seen at Nounivak island, or
they are covered with driftwood as observed in Kotzebue sound, or as at
Tapkan, Siberia, where the corpse is lashed to a long pole and is taken
some distance from the village, when the clothes are stripped off,
placed on the ground and covered with stones. The cadaver is then
exposed in the open air to the tender mercies of crows, foxes and
wolves. The weapons and other personal effects of the decedent are
placed near by, probably with something of the same sentiment that
causes us to use chaplets of flowers and immortelles as funeral
offerings--a custom that Schiller has commemorated in "Bringet hier die
letzen Gaben."

The future destiny of these people is a question in which the theologian
and politician are not less interested than the man of science. Some
observers seem to think that their numbers are diminishing under the
evil influence of so-called civilization. But as every race participates
in the same moral nature, and the entire history of humanity, according
to Herder, is a series of events pointing to a higher destiny than has
yet been revealed, there is no reason why the sum of human happiness,
under proper auspices, should not be increased among the Innuit race.
Arch-deacon Kirkby, a Church of England clergyman who has lately visited
them in a missionary capacity as far as Boothia, speaks in the highest
terms of their intelligence and capacity for improvement. Here, then, is
a brilliant opportunity for some one full of propagandism and charity to
repeat the acts of the modern apostles and extend the influence of
civilization to the gay, lively, curious and talkative hyperboreans
whose home is under the midnight sun and on the borders of the Icy Sea.