exchange amongst themselves many articles of
Russian manufacture, for which they pay much
more than the value in fossil ivory, furs and
seal-skins. They are orderly and quiet people
in their intercourse with each other, and with
strangers, although lively and talkative enough
in society; but they are inveterate thieves and
liars, like almost all savage and half-civilised
peoples. As they do not marry young, and the
women suckle their children till about four years
of age, the families are generally small. Their
language is peculiar, and appears to be little
varied amongst the numerous tribes along the
extended line of coast inhabited by their race.

The Samoyeds are intermediate in character
between the Eskimos and the Lapps, and they
occupy the north-eastern promontory of Asia,
approaching nearer the north pole than the
Eskimos, except those of the north-western
extremity of Greenland and the opposite shore of
Smith's Sound. They are an inferior people to
the Eskimos, though in many important respects
resembling them, and appear to be driven into
the corner of land they now inhabit by the pressure
of adjoining tribes of greater energy. The
Lapps, however, are even ruder and coarser than
the Samoyeds, and rank among the lowest of the
white races. Living nearer to civilised man in
Europe, they have embraced Christianity in a
very imperfect manner, and are better known
than their companion tribes of the arctic circle,
but they are a particularly dwarfish race, with
large heads, broad faces, flat noses, small eyes,
large mouth, long thick beards, thin legs, and
long arms. They are confined to the northern
extremity of Scandinavia, and may be said to
depend on the rein-deer for their very existence.

The relation of external geographical and
climatal conditions on the progress of the
human race, is a fact which it requires little
illustration to prove, though a very long and
interesting disquisition might be written
concerning it. But if we take into consideration
the changes that take place in climate, and their
dependence on other changes always and
inevitably proceeding, and tending to alter and
rearrange the whole of the solid matter or land
of our globe, we shall soon see how important it
becomes to consider fairly such a case as that
afforded by the land and water, the climate and
habitable portion of the arctic and antarctic
lands. In the one we have much land within a
moderate distance of the arctic circle, the land
having moderate elevation, and most part of it
breaking up into islands in the higher latitudes.
In the other we have scarcely any adjacent land
outside the antarctic circle, but much, and some
of it at least very lofty land, almost immediately
within. In the north the land seems to die
away entirely in the highest latitudes known,
and in the south in the one only accessible inlet
we find lofty mountains at the furthest point.
In the north the climate in those lands between
the fortieth parallel and the arctic circle, may be
said to be of all known lands the most
convenient for the full exercise of the human
intellects, faculties, and instincts. In the south,
with the exception of Tasmania and part of New
Zealand, there are no lands in which men live in
a civilised state, between latitude forty degrees
south and the south pole, and the climate in
most parts of that vast area is totally unadapted
for human requirements. Such are the simple
facts of the case brought within a few sentences.

Now let the reader consider the inevitable
result should certain changes take place in the
position of land and water. In the first place,
let us suppose the case exactly inverted, and it
must be at once seen that the south would
become the seat of civilisation and the north of
barbarism, for there can be nothing but the relative
position of the land and water to cause the
overwhelming difference in climate. If the former
were interchanged, the latter would be also.

But let us consider what would happen if
certain minor and preparatory changes should
occur. Let us suppose a gradual sinking of
land over the whole north temperate zone, and
a corresponding rise near the equator and
within the arctic circle. The more land and the
higher the land thus produced, the more
continuous and thicker would become the coating
of snow and ice upon it.  The winter's frost,
which even now penetrates in all the circumpolar
lands to a great depth through the sand
and gravel, would soon cease to be affected at
all by the summer sun. The warm current from
the Gulf of Mexico would be diverted and dissipated,
the hot summers of Europe, Asia, and
America would cease to exist, and the depressed
land would acquire the low mean temperature of
the ocean—ice would soon come down as it once
did on all the mountain valleys of Europe, and
icebergs loaded with blocks and boulders would
be stranded on the plains. The vegetation
would be destroyed, and numerous races of
quadrupeds and birds would disappear, while
others stronger and more easily adapted to
change would become predominant. Europe
and America would then come back to what
geologists call the glacial period.

But if, at the same time, numerous islands
and tracts of land were rising in the south
temperate zone, while the south polar lands
were sinking, the warm moist average temperature
of New Zealand, with its lofty trees and
rich luxuriant fern vegetation, would first
extend over a wider area, and perhaps a connexion
might be formed in time by means of Australia
with India on the one side, and by a chain of
islands or continuous mainland with South
America on the other. By degrees the glaciers
of Patagonia, now abundant and near the sea in
the latitude of the Mediterranean shores, would
retire up into the higher recesses of the Andes,
and present phenomena like those afforded now
abundantly in the Alps. A way would be opened
for new tribes of animals to multiply and people
the earth in this quarter, and the tropical races
of Africa and America would perhaps advance
southward, gradually adapting themselves to the
altered circumstances, so soon as the reduction
of the high southern land and the formation of
an open ocean instead of a huge barrier of ice