From north to south it equally keeps the line of coast, extending to irregular distances inland, but rarely very far.
However, between the direction in latitude, and the direction in longitude, as this distribution of the Eskimo area may be called, there is a difference which is a very important one. The Eskimos of the Atlantic are not only easily distinguished from the tribes of American aborigines which lie to the south or west of them, and with which they come in contact, but they stand in strong contrast and opposition to them--a contrast and opposition exhibited equally in appearance, manners, language, and one which has had full justice done to it by those who have written on the subject.
It is not so with the Eskimos of Russian America, and the parts that look upon the Pacific. _These_ are so far from being separated by any broad and trenchant line of demarcation from the proper Indians or the so-called Red Race, that they pass gradually into it; and that in respect to their habits, manner, and appearance, equally. So far is this the case that he would be a bold man who should venture, in speaking of the southern tribes of Russian America, to say _here the Eskimo area ends, and here a different area begins_.
Whenever this has been done, it has been done on the strength of an undue extension of the phenomena of the Eskimo area on the Atlantic; it being supposed that as the Eskimo and Indians differ unequivocally on one side of the continent, they must needs do so on the other also--a natural, but a hasty and incorrect assumption.
Beginning with the Eskimo of the parts between Asia and America, the first we meet with are--
_The Aleutians._--The inhabitants of the Aleutian Islands, properly so-called (_i.e._, of Behring's and Copper Islands), of the Rat-Islands, of the Andreanowsky Islands, of the Prebülowüni-Islands, of Unalashka, and of Kadiak, are all Eskimo; a fact which numerous vocabularies give us full means of ascertaining. In respect to the difference of speech between particular islands, there is external evidence that it is considerable. The people of Atcha have a difficulty in understanding the Unalashkans, and _vice versâ_. Again, the Kadiak vocabulary, as found in Lisiansky, differs very notably from the Unalashkan of the same author; indeed, I doubt whether the two languages are mutually intelligible.