Page:The International Folk-Lore Congress of the World's Columbian Exposition, Chicago, July, 1893.djvu/75

Rh answers more fully to the trolls of tradition. As one goes westward from Alaska into Asia, via Kamchatka and the Kurile Islands, the Eskimo type becomes gradually blended with the Ai'no. The Eskimo "kayak" is found in the Kuriles, the sledges of the Ai'nos are drawn by teams of curly-haired "Eskimo" dogs, and there are other links of custom, and even of physique, uniting the Eskimo to the natives of the Kuriles, of Yesso and of Saghalien. Now, the people have scarcely yet relinquished the custom of living in half-underground houses, during winter,—a custom which was formerly more general. And, in these islands, the people living in such habitations and in caves were, according to history and tradition, dwarfs. Chinese records of very early date speak of an island, understood to be Saghalien, in which there was a nation of dwarfs, living in grottoes, and having no covering but their own shaggy skins. Japanese and Ai'no tradition further states that those earth-dwelling dwarfs "were only about three or four feet in height," and that "their arms were very long in proportion to their bodies."

As recently as 1613, an English traveller reports a remnant of the dwarfs then living in the north of Yesso; and indeed the Ai'nos of to day are regarded by some as their modified descendants. Be this as it may, those dwarfs of northeastern Asia resemble the trolls of Scandinavian tradition more closely than do the Lapps and Eskimos, not because of their pit-dwellings and their cave-dwellings (for that does not distinguish them from the others) nor even because of their disproportionately long arms (for that, too, is a Lapp characteristic) but because of their shaggy skins. It is true that the male "Skroeling" who escaped from Karlsefne's party was described as "bearded"; but that only seems to denote that he was a man, as distinguished from the females. In this respect, therefore, the earth-dwelling dwarfs of Yesso more nearly represent the hairy trolls of Scandinavia than any modern race. But the Picts of British tradition, although extinct for many centuries (as a separate race) show us the