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 CHAPTER X.

THE ESKIMOS.

The Eskimos, the most northerly inhabitants of the globe, are in many respects a strange and interesting people. In appearance they are short and well-built, with fat, round faces, usually almost entirely devoid of hair; the eyebrows and eyelashes are so scanty as to be scarcely discernible, giving to their brown, oily faces a singularly bare and homely appearance. Their hair, like that of the Indians, is black and straight. By the women it is worn plaited, and twisted up into three knots, one at either side of the head and one at the back. The men wear theirs short, and well down over their forehead, for protection from the cold in winter and from the sun in summer.

While the Eskimos as a rule are short and homely in appearance, still I have met with some very handsome, stalwart men, quite up to the standard height of Canadians, and a few pretty, charming women. Most of them have bright soft brown eyes, which of themselves are features of beauty; but they serve these savages a better and more useful purpose, furnishing marvellous powers of vision and enabling their owners to see objects clearly at great distances. The eyes of the Anglo-Saxon,