Page:Narrative of the Discoveries on the North Coast of America.djvu/189

 visible, but on the western side a broad lane of water stretched away towards Cape Smyth. So inviting was the prospect in that direction, that I would not have hesitated a moment to prosecute the voyage to Behring's Strait, and the Russian settlements, in my skin canoe. I could scarcely, in fact, suppress an indefinite feeling of regret that all was already done.

That eloquent and philosophical historian, Doctor Robertson, has all but demonstrated that America was first peopled from Asia by Behring's Strait. The Esquimaux inhabiting all the Arctic shores of America have doubtless originally spread from Greenland, which was peopled from northern Europe; but their neighbours, the Loucheux of Mackenzie River, have a clear tradition that their ancestors migrated from the westward, and crossed an arm of the sea. The language of the latter is entirely different from that of the other known tribes who possess the vast region to the northward of a line drawn from Churchill, on Hudson's Bay, across the Rocky Mountains, to New Caledonia. These, comprehending the Chipewyans, the Copper Indians, the Beaver Indians of Peace River, the Dog-ribs and Hare Indians of Mackenzie River and Great Bear Lake, the Thoecanies, Nahanies, and Dahadinnehs of the Mountains, and the