Of the tundra it is enough to say that all depends on the reindeer.  This animal is the be-all and end-all of Lapp existence.  When Nansen, after crossing Greenland, sailed home with his two Lapps, he called their attention to the crowds of people assembled to welcome them at the harbour.  “Ah,” said the elder and more thoughtful of the pair, “if they were only reindeer!” When domesticated, the reindeer yields milk as well as food, though large numbers are needed to keep the community in comfort.  Otherwise hunting and fishing must serve to eke out the larder.  Miserable indeed are the tribes or rather remnants of tribes along the Siberian tundra who have no reindeer.  On the other hand, if there are plenty of wild reindeer, as amongst the Koryaks and some of the Chukchis, hunting by itself suffices.

* * * * *

Let us now pass on from the Eurasian northland to what is, zoologically, almost its annexe, North America; its tundra, for example, where the Eskimo live, being strictly continuous with the Asiatic zone.  Though having a very different fauna and flora, South America presumably forms part of the same geographical province so far as man is concerned, though there is evidence for thinking that he reached it very early.  Until, however, more data are available for the pre-history of the American Indian, the great moulding forces, geographical or other, must be merely guessed at.  Much turns on the period assigned to the first appearance of man in this region; for that he is indigenous is highly improbable, if only because no anthropoid apes are found here.  The racial type, which, with the exception of the Eskimo, and possibly of the salmon-fishing tribes along the north-west coast, is one for the whole continent, has a rather distant resemblance to that of the Asiatic Mongols.  Nor is there any difficulty in finding the immigrants a means of transit from northern Asia.  Even if it be held that the land-bridge by way of what are now the Aleutian Islands was closed at too early a date for man to profit by it, there is always the passage over the ice by way of Behring Straits; which, if it bore the mammoth, as is proved by its remains in Alaska, could certainly bear man.

Once man was across, what was the manner of his distribution?  On this point geography can at present tell us little.  M. Demolins, it is true, describes three routes, one along the Rockies, the next down the central zone of prairies, and the third and most easterly by way of the great lakes.  But this is pure hypothesis.  No facts are adduced.  Indeed, evidence bearing on distribution is very hard to obtain in this area, since the physical type is so uniform throughout.  The best available criterion is the somewhat poor one of the distribution of the very various languages.  Some curious lines of migration are indicated by the occurrence of the same type of language in widely separated regions, the most striking example being