THE MOST PRIMITIVE RACE ON EARTH.

Matamata Record, Volume II, Issue 66, 24 January 1918, Page 4

THE MOST PRIMITIVE RACE ON EARTH.

The “North Pole natives” alluded to by Captain Amundsen in a recent lecture were discovered by him while he was navigating his little craft, the Gjoa, through the North-West Passage in 1903-7. He christened them “Nochilli,” and considered them to be the most primitive race on earth. No white man had ever before invaded their icy fastnesses. Consequently, they were ignorant of the use of iron. Their fishing implements were long spears, fashioned out of reindeer horn. They knew no other method of procuring fire than that of rubbing two pieces of wood together. They were, in short, still in the stage of civilisation reached by our ancestors of the Stone Age. So cut off were they from others of their kind that they imagined their tribe was the only one in the world, and displayed the utmost astonishment when told of populous countries far to the south, where neither ice nor snow was. The Gjoa and her crew they thought to havo dropped from the moon, and the first Necilli to come aboard felt the deck, masts, boats, oars, all the while whispering to one another in amazement: “How much wood there is in the moon—how very muAPJ

“THE ONCE-URON-A-TIMES.” I don’t care for tho papers you Big, grown-up folks read through and through; Tho one I take is full of rhymes, And called 1 ‘The Once-Upon-a-linies* It has a famous reputation, And has an c-nor-mous circulation. It tells about Red Riding Hood, And those poor Babes lost in the \Vooa; Gives latest news of Miss B. Peep, Says if she’s lost or found her sheep; What Lord Mayor Whittington i® doing, And if the Frog has gone a-wooing. About the Woman in a Shoe, Who had so very much to do, “The Once-Upon-a-Times” knows all, As well as Humpty Dumpty’s fall. , They’ll either have to fry or poach him. And till then, no one may approach iiim. The Hatter, Dormouse, and March jj a re And other friends you’ll meet with there: In fact, the oldest and the best Of papers, it must be confessed, Ana children of all sorts and ages Find entertainment in its pages. —Ada Leonora Harris in “Childs Companion.” PROFITING BY EXPERIENCE. . Little Johnny had been naughty. At last he slapped his small sister. When father came home, mother told him of his son’s misdeeds. “The next time you tease your sister, you go to bed without dinner,” father said, sternly. The hoy sat in silence for a few moments. Then he turned to his father. “The next time I want to hit sister, I’ll wait until after dinner,” ho retamrksd. THEY DON’T MIND THE COLD. Eskimo children wear the same clothes as their parents—very thick fur socks, and mo suits of reindeer or sealskin, which have no openings behind or before, but are just slipped over their heads ,and tucked well into their long boots. Girls and women have a flap-like apron at the back of their outer suit, and a big fur hood fitted to the collar. Their heads and part of their faces are covered by more sealskin, and, thus sheltered, both boys and girls face the cold quite happily.