List members , here is an interesting extract from "A Journey to the Earth's Interior" about the true origin of Eskimos :
ESKIMOS HAVE OWN IDEA OF ORIGIN
That they originally came from a land of constant sunshine, from a country away past the northern ice-barrier is the tradition of the Eskimos themselves, and it is a tradition which must be given full weight, for it could not have arisen among them in the first place without good cause. On this point Dr. Senn says:
"When questioned"--as to the land of their origin--"they invariably point north without having the faintest perception of what this means."
Naturally the Eskimos do not know that the earth is hollow and that ages ago they lived in its interior, but they have clung to that one simple fact--they came from the north. Dr. Senn denies that they have any characteristics in common with the North American Indian and thinks that they are the remnant of "the oldest inhabitants of the western hemisphere." In this attributing of great antiquity to them he may be right--at least he there agrees with Nansen. But the interior of the earth and not the western hemisphere is evidently the place of their original abode.
THEIR FAITH IN THIS ORIGINAL HOME
As for the land of perpetual sunshine, the Eskimo, of course, does not remember that as something he himself has seen, for it is very questionable if any of
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the Eskimos of the present generation have ever penetrated to the interior. But it is a well known fact that every race has its idea of a "golden age" or paradise which is generally composed of the elements which are handed down in its stories and myths as being characteristic of its earliest home. Thus the Eskimo legends handed down generation after generation, tales of the interior land with its ever shining sun, and what could be more natural than when the Eskimo came to build in fancy a paradise for himself and his loved ones after they should die, that he should reconstruct this first home of which he had heard only in dim legends? That, at any rate is just what he has done. Dr. Senn, discussing their religion, says:
"They believe in a future world. . . The soul descends beneath the earth into various abodes--the first of which is somewhat in the nature of a purgatory: but the good spirits passing through it find that the other mansions improve till at a great depth they reach that of perfect bliss, where the sun never sets, and where by the side of large lakes that never freeze, the deer roam in large herds and the seal and the walrus always abound in the waters."
That paradise might serve as almost a literal description of the land in the interior of the earth, and the way in which the Eskimo indicates a preliminary purgatory before it can be reached may well be the reflection of a memory handed down in the tribe of
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the great hardships and difficulties of the ice barrier between that wonderful home and the present situation of the Eskimo on the southern side of that great natural obstacle.
It is also interesting to note that when the Eskimo first saw Peary's effort to get further north than the great ice-cap of Greenland beyond which they themselves had no ambition to explore--they immediately thought that the reason for his trying to get further north was to get into communication with other tribes there. That idea would hardly have occurred to them if it were not for the fact that they had traditional or other evidence of people in the supposedly unpopulated north.
With such a weight of evidence all pointing one way it is very hard to resist the conclusion that in the Eskimo we find a type, changed now and mixed with other types, but still something of a type of human being that has inhabited or very likely still inhabits the interior of the earth. We can certainly find no origin for them that explains their present situation. And their legends admit of no other explanation either. For those legends certainly point to the same sort of land as every chapter in this book has pointed to--a land of perpetual sun and mild climate, a land corresponding to the "Ultima Thule" of ancient legend and that may sooner than the skeptic expects, be opened up once more to those who go properly equipped to seek it.