“BLONDE” ESKIMOS.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXV, Issue 95, 29 April 1913, Page 4

“BLONDE” ESKIMOS.

The Canadian explorer Vilhjaimur Steffansson has now made an official report to the Geological Survey Department of his recent expedition through the “last unknown territory” to the north of Canada. In regard to the “white Eskimos” which he discovered in Coronation Bay, ho expressed the opinion that they are descendants of some Scandinavian col ony from Greenland, whtoso people wandered to the coast and inter-mar-ried with the Eskimos, whose habits and customs they have adopted. He urges the Government to protect this people from the results of partial civilisation, including more particularly the spread of disease. They are suffering from contact with European traders, and are rapidly dying off from measles. Mr Steffansson describes them as heathens of a splendid type, hunting with the bow and arrow, and living On caribou and seal. He urges the Government to send a number of mounted police to the district to protect the natives from disease, and the caribou from ’the rifles of the white % men. Mr Steffansson intends starting out on a further expedition next month under the aegis of the Canadian Government. He will make his base at meridian 76, 900 miles from Herschell Island, and from there will explore the northern territory, his principal object being to find whether there is another continent, ' a frozen sea or a group of islands.