E STONE AGE MEN OF TO-DAY.

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume XLI, Issue 13299, 7 February 1914, Page 9

E STONE AGE MEN OF TO-DAY.

_*. — , _ THE WHITE MAN'S FIRST VISIT. LONDON, Doc. 15. The visit of a single Avliite man to a primitive tribe of Eskimos m Alaska, who had never before seen a whit_ man and who "gathered their food wit^x the weapons of tlie men of the Stone Age" is the subject of an exceptionally inter-esting-book just v published — "My Life with the Eskimo" — by Mr'.Vilhjalmur Stefansson, the Canadian explorer, whose ship the Karluk has drifted away m the ice. The expedition which is the subject of the book covered the period 1908---1912. ' "We had walked out bf the twentieth century," says Mr Stefansson, "into the country of the . intellectual and cultural contemporaries of a far earlier age than King Arthur's. ... I had nothing to imagine; I had merely to look and listen; for here were not remains of the Stone Age but the Stone Age itself." Mr Stefansson, by three years' dwelling with another Eskimo tribe, had learnt a similar dialect to, that of the primitive people. "It cannot often have happened m the history of the Avorld that the first white man to visit a primitive people Avas one who spoke their language." "When we approached the village eveiy man, Avoman, and child Avas out?, doors, Avaiting for us excitedly, fdr they could tell from afar that we - were no orelinary visitors. The man Avhom we first approached explained to an eagerly silent crowd that we were friends, who had come without evil intent, and immediately the whole crowd (about forty) came running towards us. As each came up he would say, T ani So-and-So. lam Avell disposed. T have no knife. Who are you?' . . . .Sometimes a man Avould present his Avife, or a Avoman her husband, according to which came up first. The Avomen were m more hurry to be presented than the men, for they must, they said, go right back to their houses to cook us something to eat. "After the women had gone the men asked us Avhether we preferred to have our 'camp right m the village or a little outside it. ... A few of the best housebuilders set about erecting a house for us .. . . When it had been finished and furnished with the skins, lamp, and the other things . that tgo to make a snoArhouse the cosiest and most comfortable Of camps, they told us they hoped we womld occupy it till the last piece of meat m the "storehouse had been eaten, and that fo long as we stayed no man would hunt seals cr do any work until the children began to complain of hunger. It was to be a holiday, they said. "That evening they saw for the first time the lighting of a sulphur match ; the next day I showed them the greater marvels of my rifle." The fiirst questions of the explorer's hostess , we're, not of the land from which he came, but of his footgear. "Weren't my feet just a little damp, and might she riot ■ pull. roy boots off for me and dry them over the lamp?" ' ■ ■__ •