MYSTERIOUS ARCTIC RACE.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume I, Issue 261, 21 October 1911, Page 4 (Supplement)

MYSTERIOUS ARCTIC RACE.

MEN WITOSF ORIGIN IS A

PROBLEM

A now race of ,’ol.n- men of tl'.o European type, who had aeur seen l. white man before, has been discovered bv A’ilLjmar S r ef: n-ion, the lender of the scientific expedition sent by tlm American Afuseum in lt)08 to exp'ore the Arctic coast of British Columbia. The information was conta'uod in a letter from Stefansson received to-day by Mr. H. L Bridgman, of Brooklyn, the secretary of the Peary Arctic Club. It is doted October 18, 1910, and wan written nt tho mouth of tho Deane River, where Richardson and Roc winterer! ,a.t tho 4|:rne of if iio Fran Win Search Ex-pedition. Stefansson writes: "AVo have discoved a people in a region supposedly uninhabited who have never soon a white man or Indian, and did not oven know I was not an Eskimo so little wwo they informed on what white men are like. ‘

“AYo have discovered Eskimos in speech and habits who- arc Scandinavians in appearance.

TWO CURIOUS PROBLEMS.

_ “Tnin find is the beginning of a solution of one of two problems:—(a) What became of some of Franklin’s men, (b) what became of the three thousand Scandinavians who disappeared from Greenland in the fifteenth century. If neither of these quesitens is ’to Tn'v'Hri’--swerod. then we have introduced a new scientific problem -AVhy do some people in Victoria Land differ markedly from tho rc=t cf their race? Why arc they so European in type? “AA’o found these people on the south coast of A r ictoria Land, having heard about them at Cape Bexley. My Eskimo companions said, ‘These are not Eskimos; they are f’castlo men.' Two men had lieards much like mine, and mine might be referred to as red. "There are about forty individuals in. this group, and there are said t« bo others like them further north. "We are the first to attempt Hcientific research among the uncontaminated Arctic people. A few early English expeditions found the Eskimos unspoiled, but paid little attention to them. Nansen, Peary, and Amundsen never mot Eskimos unspoiled by previous contact with white*. The opportunity to show tlio rpsu'ts is therefore ours, nnd ’f wo do not do it. wc have only our lack of abiliiy to blame.”