Note 550 — Chapter II

Behring’s Straits, first opened, as Wallace says, in quaternary times, are 45 miles across, and are often frozen in winter. South of them is an island where a tribe of Eskimos live, and they keep constant communication with the main of Asia, 50 miles distant, and with America, 120 miles away. Robertson solved the difficulty by this route. Cf. Contributions to Amer. Ethnology (1877), i. 95-98; Warden’s Recherches; Maury, in Revue des deux Mondes, Ap. 15, 1858; Peschel’s Races of Men, p. 401; F. von Hellwald in Smithsonian Report, 1866; Short, p. 510; Bancroft, Native Races, v. 28, 29, 54; and Chavanne’s Lit. of the Polar Regions, 58, 194—the last page shows a list of maps. Max Müller (Chips, ii. 270) considers this theory a postulate only.