Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 07.djvu/239

* ESDRAS. 207 ESKIMO. of the Vulgate) represents an independent trans- lation of the Hebrew of the canonical book of Ezra, together with the last two chapters of II. Chronicles and a porl ion of the eighth chapter of Nehemiah. This translation, which is used by Josephus, is probably later than the oilier Sep tuagint version (Esdras li), and is distinguished from it by the freer character of the translation and the use of ;i more elegant Greek. The Second Book of Esdras (Esdras IV. of the Vulgate) is an apocalyptic work composed between si and 96 A.D. according to recent critics, Whether it was originally written in Hebrew or Greek is dis- puted; it exists now only in versions (Latin, Syriac, Ethiopie). The Latin version contains four chapters not found in the Greek text, though translated from a Greek original. (If these ad- ditions chapters i. and ii. are Christian in char- acter; the other two, chapters xv. and xvi., are Jewish. The original apocalypse, therefore, con- sists of chapters iii.-xiv., and contains a series of seven visions revealed to Ezra touching upon the desolation of Zion, the advent of the Messiah, and the final judgment, with the triumph of the righteous. In the fifth a monstrous eagle with three heads appears to Ezra, and this eagle, which is rebuked by a lion, is interpreted to be the fourth kingdom in the vision of Daniel, whereas the lion is the Messiah. The Christian additions treat of the rejection of the Jewish people by God and His choice of Gentile Chris- tians. The Jewish additions contain chiefly in- vectives against sinners, with predictions of wars and disasters. ESERINE, See Calabak Bean. ESH'ER, William Baliol Brett, First Vis- count (1S15-99). An English jurist. He was educated at Westminster and ait Caius College. Cambridge, and was called to the bar in 1846. He sat in Parliament during 1866-68, and then became Solicitor-General, but was in the same year appointed a justice of the Court of Common Pleas. He was a lord justice of appeal from 1876 to 1883, and then ' became Master of the Lolls. He was knighted in 1868, and raised to the peerage in 1897. ESK. The name of a small Scotch river of Dumfriesshire, formed by the confluence of the Black Esk and White Esk, which rise on the bor- ders of Selkirkshire, near Ettrick Pen. It runs 35 miles south and forms for a mile the boundary between Scotland and England (Map: Scotland, E 4). For the last eight miles it runs south- southwest through Cumberland, ending in the Solway Firth. It flows through some charming scenery, past Langholm. Canobie, and Longton. The upper part of its valley is called Eskdale Muir. ESTCERS, ES'KARS, or ES'CHARS (Ir. eiscir, ridge). The name given in Ireland to large heaps of gravel that were accumulated during the Pleistocene period. They are identical with the asar of Sweden, and are known in Scotland under the name of kames. The gravel is often heaped into narrow ridges forty to eighty feet in height and from one to twenty miles in length. Similar winding ridges of gravel and sand are found in northern North America, where they are often associated with broad level-topped de- posits of sands and gravels closely resembling river deltas. This association and their peculiar structure and configuration have led to the belief thai eskers arc deposits formed by Btreams which flowed beneath the ice sheet ol thi Gls Period, in general the eskers follow the direction in which the continental glaciei moved. ESKILSTUNA, es'klls-too'na (Swed., I town). A city of Sweden, situated on the E kil in maa, Over 60 miles west of Stockholm (Map: Swe- den, (I 7 ) . The town, divided into old and new - lions by the river, is regularlj built in the new quarter, and is famed for its iron and steel nninn i. id on s, especially the gun factory on an island in t he river. There is regular communical ion h ii n Stockholm by steamship as well as by rail. Pop ulation, in 1900, 13,663. Eskilstuna is named after Saint Eskil, the English apostle of Chris- tianity in S.„l, i iiianhind, who is supposed to have been buried here after his martyrdom. ES'KIMO. A race of the yellow type, confined to the Arctic regions of America and the extreme northeastern part of Asia. The name means 'raw-fish eaters,' and was applied to them by their Algonquin Indian neighbors living south of them. The American Eskimo call thmselves Innuit, i.e. men; their congeners in Asia giving themselves the name Yuit or Yu-kouk, other forms of the same word. The Eskimo have been so absolutely secluded in their habitat that an thropologists have had great trouble in dealing with the question of their origin. Dr. H. Rink, wdio has made a life study of Greenland and its people, and is the greatest authority on them, holds that most Eskimo weapons and imple- ments are of American origin; he advances the theory that, even though the Eskimos originally came from Asia, they developed as a race in the interior of Alaska, whence the}' finally migrated northward and spread out along the coasts of the ice sea. He says that their speech is closely con- nected with the primitive dialects of America, while their legends and customs resemble, or at least suggest, those of the Indians. The re- searches of Dall, Olivier, Nordquist, Krause, and others, however, have led to the conclusion now generally adopted that the Eskimo were derived directly from peoples of the Asiatic polar regions, some of whom came to America across the narrow Bering Strait. The Koriak and Tchuktchi, who in- habit the extreme eastern portion of the penin- sula of. Siberia, are regarded as an Asiatic branch of the Eskimo race, numbering probably not more than 2000 souls. Though the evidence as to the origin of the Eskimo is not complete, there is at least good reason for the theory that within a comparatively recent period they lived along the American coast of Bering Strait and Bering Sea. and thence gradually spread eastward over Arctic America and its northern islands to Greenland. They must have reached Greenland before the Nor- wegian colonies of Osterbygd and Vesterbygd were established, for Eric the Red and others found in both these districts the ruins of human habi- tations, fragments of boats, and stone imple- ments, which they thought must have belonged to a feeble folk whom they therefore called 'Skrel- lings' (weaklings). Nansen and others believe that at this period the Greenland Eskimo were living north of 68° N., where seals and whales abound, and that they did not make their per- manent settlements in South Greenland until after they hail destroyed the Norwegian colonies there in the fourteenth century.