greater justice, of the historic surveys; they are absolutely necessary in order to place the main matter of the book in its right perspective. The fact that Nansen succeeds in retaining our interest through all these heterogeneous chapters is due to the unflagging animation of his style, the clearness of his exposition, in short, to his unusual talent for treating science popularly. In our literature, which is specially poor in this department, he takes an eminent place.

At the end of his First Crossing of Greenland, he prints some extracts from his diary at Sardlok and Kangek. 'It is no active life I am leading here,' he says; in fact, I am fast turning Eskimo. I live as the natives do, eat their food, and am learning to appreciate such dainties as raw blubber, raw halibut skin, frozen crowberries mixed with rancid blubber, and so on. I talk to the people as well as I can, go out in my kaiak, fish, and shoot on land and water. In fact, I begin to see that there is really nothing to prevent a European turning Eskimo, if he only has his time before him.'

It

He devoted himself to the unusual sport of drawing halibut-the same halibut-three or four times up to the surface from a depth of a hundred fathoms, in such cold that his cheeks, nose, and chin were in danger of being frost-bitten. At the end of February he was at Kangek. is delightful,' he writes, to see the days lengthening, and the sea shimmering in the rising sun, to feel it shine almost warmly, to go out seal-hunting in the grey of the morning, and to return in the evening with the daylight not yet quite spent. Society, steam, great thoughts, and great miseryall lie far, far away. To roam at large and enjoy life—that is our sole concern.'

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The Greenlanders themselves have given a sketch of Nansen and his comrades which deserves to be quoted. "Nansen was unusually clever,' says the writer, at learning the language; for although it was only six and a half months since he landed here, he could understand almost everything, and whether he was out in the surf helping to beach our kaiaks, or visiting us in

our houses, he spoke without much difficulty, and so that we could easily understand him, as he understood us.

"We missed them all terribly when they went away; they were such handsome fellows it did us good to look at them, and they took to us in return, so that we came almost to regard them as our own countrymen. We went and visited them whenever we pleased; and besides, they were not at all particular, but ate almost anything we gave them, except rotten, fermenting things, and said that they liked it.' Nansen, the writer continues, was very soon able to manage a kaiak without any special appliances for safety. He would accompany us both in stormy weather and when we were going to be out far into the night, paddling with the best of us.'

SKETCH BY E. WERENSKIOLD

1 Translated by Mrs. S. Rink from the Greenland newspaper, Atuagagdliutit.

When Nansen had finished his account of the journey across Greenland, he recorded in detail his impressions of the Greenland natives in his book entitled Eskimo Life (1891). This is not only an excellently written and unusually interesting book, but also a most important document towards the elucidation of Nansen's character. He quotes in the preface the old saying: Amicus Plato, amicus Socrates, magis amica veritas;' and he tells what he believes to be the truth with characteristic courage, and here and there with a recklessness which is perhaps no less characteristic. His views on Christianity and Christian Missions are so diametrically opposed to the accepted doctrines that if he had had popularity in view he would never have written this book, or at any rate would have kept his heresies in the background, and aimed at an objectivity which should wound people less. But it was not in his nature to do so. On the contrary, he gave free rein to his enthusiasm on the one hand, and to his defiant youthful audacity on the other. There can be no doubt that where he sets about weighing the civilised man and the child of nature against each other his own character gets in his light and prevents him from taking a quite impartial view of things. But for that very reason the book becomes a valuable piece of self-revelation.

Nansen is of course right when he dwells upon the sins of which so-called civilisation has been guilty in its dealings with the primitive races. What has become of the Indians? What of the once so haughty Mexicans, or the highly gifted Incas of Peru? Where are the aborigines of Tasmania and the native races of Australia? Soon there will not be a single one of them left to raise an accusing voice against the race which has brought them to destruction?' 1

1 Eskimo Life, p. 341.

Every day the newspapers bring us accounts of outrages committed in the name of civilisation, which fill one with indignant horror. But when Nansen places himself entirely on the side of barbarism, when he represents it as a misfortune. that the Eskimos should have learnt to read and write, because they cannot possibly devote time to these acquirements without sacrificing some of their expertness as seal-hunters, many people will be unable to follow him. There is, as it seems to us, something too individual in this point of view.

What, then, can induce Nansen, the man of science, the explorer, one of the dauntless pioneers of civilisation, to talk of its venomous sting,' and so forth? One is tempted to ask whether any event in his life has embittered him against society? We know of no such event. There is one utterance in Eskimo Life that might lend itself to misunderstanding in this sense. "When I see all the wrangling and all the coarse abuse of opponents which form the staple of the different party newspapers at home, I now and then. wonder what these worthy politicians would say if they knew anything of the Eskimo community, and whether they would not blush before the people whom that man of God, Hans Egede, characterised as follows: These ignorant, coldblooded creatures, living without order or discipline, with no knowledge of any sort of worship, in brutish stupidity.' With what good right would these savages look down upon us, if they knew that here, even in the public press, we applied to each other the lowest terms of contumely, as for example, liar,' 'traitor,' 'perjurer,' 'lout,' rowdy,' &c.? while they never utter a syllable of abuse, their very language being unprovided with words of this class, in which ours is so rich.'1

1 Eskimo Life, p. 100.

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This passage no doubt came straight from the heart; for Nansen himself is of a type more akin to the old Norsemen than to certain of their descendants, in whom the lust of battle has degenerated into mere quarrelsomeness, and who cannot strike, but rather scratch and claw. He is of a largelymoulded and at the same time gentle nature, such as we find in the Sagas, self-confident, and determined to follow his own path, but without a trace of low pugnacity. The goals he has set himself are too great to permit of any pettiness. Like the Greenlanders, he cannot afford to waste time in squabbling.'

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Personally, therefore, he has always held aloof from this trumpery warfare. The troll-urchins in the Dovre-King's Hall' have never really molested him. When he wrote his book about the Eskimos, he had no quarrel whatever either with humanity in general, or with Norwegian society in particular. But all the influences of his childhood and his youth attracted him to the primitive forms of life. To roam at large' and to enjoy life' are for him synonymous. To most of us, the privations involved in life in an Eskimo hut would be unendurable, while its filthiness would revolt us. To him, these things are trifles. He has been accustomed from childhood upwards to go without food for long periods, and then to eat whatever comes in his way. House, hut, or tent-it is all the same to him. The joys of action and achievement await him without. He can dash with his kaiak into the jaws of the tempest, he can stalk the walrus and the polar bear-all in the midst of vast natural surroundings. He is attached to this people because it is amiable, warm-hearted, and full of brotherly kindness and true Christian charity. But he is also filled with admiration

1 See Peer Gynt, Act. II. Sc. 6.