"And now the land," said Othere, And I followed the curving shore, Into a nameless sea. "And there we hunted the walrus, And like the lightning's flame "There were six of us altogether, Norsemen of Helgoland; In two days and no more We killed of them threescore, And dragged them to the strand!” Here Alfred, the Truth-Teller, And lifted his blue eyes, And Othere, the old sea-captain, And to the King of the Saxons, In witness of the truth, Raising his noble head, He stretched his brown hand, and said, "Behold this walrus-tooth!" Hèl-go-land, Halgoland, in Norway; not Heligoland. From Halogi ("High - Flame "), from the ancient worship of fire here. Wal'-rus (wōl-rus), the seahorse, or morse, found in the northern seas. It is hunted for its oil and its tusks. "Wal" is the same as whale," and "rus" is the Old-English hros (German ross), our "horse." Arc-tic, strictly, "of, or pertaining to, the Bear"; northern. Greek arktos, "a bear"; hence a cluster of stars near the Pole star is named "The Bear," and the regions round about the North Pole are called the Arctic regions-the regions of the Bear (or the north). mere, lake, pool; as in "Windermere." Mere," as in mere folly," is a different word; "mere folly" is "pure, unmixed folly," "folly and nothing else." "A mere child," is "a child and nothing better," not stronger, larger, more experienced. tri-bute, payment made to a stronger party by a weaker. séa-far-ing, sea-going. Compare "wayfaring, thoroughfare." "To fare" is "to "How fares it with go." you ? you?" == "How goes it with sá-ga, story, tale, of the great deeds of northern heroes. How far. Fill in the words sàl-lied (-lid), leapt, rushed. THE ESQUIMAUX. 1. THEIR PERSONS AND THEIR DRESS. THE tribe of Esquimaux, whom we found assembled at Winter Island and Igloolik, are, in stature, much below Europeans in general. Of twenty individuals of each sex measured at Igloolik, the range was: men, from 5 feet 10 inches to 4 feet 11 inches,-the average height, 5 ft. 53 in.; women, from 5 ft. 3 in. to 4 ft. 8 in., the average height, 5 ft. 0 in. The women, in.,—the however, generally appear shorter than they really are, both from the unwieldy nature of their clothes, and from a habit, which they early acquire, of stooping considerably forward in order to balance the weight of the child they carry in their hood. In their figure they are rather well-formed than otherwise. Their knees are indeed rather large in proportion, but their legs are straight, and the hands and feet, in both sexes, remarkably small. The younger individuals were all plump, but none of them corpulent; the women inclined the most to this last extreme, and their flesh was, even in the youngest individuals, quite loose and without firmness. Their faces are generally round and full, eyes small and black, nose also small and sunk far in between the cheek bones, but not much flattened. Their teeth are short, thick, and close, generally regular, and in the |
