—­A Pagan Hymn.

“The Eskimo is a short, squat, dirty man who lives on blubber,” said text-books we had been weaned on, and this was the man we looked for.  We didn’t find him.

It was at Arctic Red River, one hundred and ninety miles of river-travel since we cut the Polar Circle, that we came upon our first Eskimo, the true class-conscious Socialist of Karl Marx, the one man without a master on the American continent.  A little band of Kogmollycs they were, men, women, and kiddies, who had come in to trade silver-fox skins for tobacco and tea at the Post of the Hudson’s Bay Company.

On the rocks they sat, waiting for the new steamer to make her landing, and much excited were they over the iron bowels of this puffing kayak of the white men.  An Eskimo generally lets you know what he thinks, and this is a basic difference between him and the Indian.  An Indian is always trying to impress you with his importance; he thinks about his dignity all day and dreams of it at night.  The Mackenzie River Eskimo is a man who commands your respect the moment you look at him, and yet he is withal the frankest of mortals, affable, joyous, fairly effervescing with good-humour.  His attitude toward the world is that of a little half-Swiss, half-Chinese baby friend of mine who, in an ecstacy of good-will when she saw her first Christmas-tree, clutched me tightly round the neck with, “Everybody are my friend.”

One of the Kogmollycs, rejoicing in the name of Wilfrid Laurier, strode on deck with the swing of a cavalryman and signified his willingness to trade.  Loading down my hunting-coat with pictures, pipes, tobacco, looking-glasses, needles, files, knives, I climbed over the cliffs with him to his hut.  Down on the floor we sat.  Wilfrid put his treasures between his knees before him, I sat opposite, and the barter began.  “What for this fellow, huh?” and he held up a piece of carved ivory, a little triangular mincing-knife, a fur mat that his wife had made, or the skin of a baby-seal.  The first thing he asked for was scented soap, the ring that I was wearing, and my porcupine-quill hat-band which looked good to him; every exchange was accompanied with smiles, each bargain sealed with a handshake.

Wilfrid Laurier is doing his part toward bridging the old chasm of animosity existing between the Eskimo and their next-door neighbours, the Loucheux Indians to the South.  Wilfrid, in taking to himself a Loucheux woman to wife, has done what the Seventh Henry of England did when he married Elizabeth of York.  Wilfrid’s son and heir holds the same place in Northern history as did Henry VIII, who united in himself the claims of the rival Roses of York and Lancaster.

[Illustration:  A Kogmollye Family]