WHITE ESKIMOS.

Otago Witness, Issue 3384, 22 January 1919, Page 66

WHITE ESKIMOS.

Blond hair from the Tblond Eskimos—alleged proof of the existence;-of that strange, far-away tribe—is .being-: brought back to civilisation by the explorer, Vilhr jalmur Stefansson, according: to P. C. Lepetich, a miner -who recently arrived here from Fort Yukon, Alaska, where he saw the explorer" (says the Seattle correspondent of the Now York World). - Stefansson is credited with the discovery o f -the light-skinned natives far up on Canada's Arctic rim He found the tribe in 1908, while commanding an expedition fitted out by the Canadian Government and th? American Museum of Natural History. The party penetrated into the white lands, marked "uninhabited" on the maps, far east of the Mackenzie River, and in 1910, on Coronation Gulf, found Eskimos who had never seen white men from the outside world. . , v , According to Stefansson, they numbered probably , 2000. Unlike their dark-hued brothers of Alaska, they had white skin, many had red hair, and men wore full beards, and all had light eyebrows. News of the discovery was brought back by Stefansson in 1912. In 1913 he set out again for the north on the trip he is now bringing to a' close. From Lepetich?s statement, it Is believed that Stefansson during the last two years made another trip to the land ot these little-known natives.