The Bridgeport evening farmer., 1913-05-17
SCRAP BOOK FOR TO-DAY


 Few ethnological discoveries of modern times have aroused so much interest and controversy as Vilhja1- nlur Stefanson's revelation in regard to tribe of blonde Eskimoss which he found three years ago to-day, May IT, 1910, while on his second expedi- ton to the Arctic regions. Since the announcement of his find by the young Canadian-Scandina exp1or- er, scientists have evolved many the ories as to the origin of the strange people of the Northland. Perhaps the favorite s11rrnise is that the tribe is descended from the Morse colony founded by Eric the Red, which dis appeared from Greenland in the df- teenth century. Others have suggest ed that the ancestors of the blonde Eskimos came over from Asia at a time when that continent was con nected with America. Again, it has been suggested that they are Irish, descendants of hardy Hibernian ex- pIorers who, according to legend, set tied in Iceland and crossed to Amer ica long before Columbus made his immortal visit to these shores. MT. Stefanson, being an Ice1ander of Scan dinavian descent, naturally inclines toward the theory that the tribe he discovered is of Ice1andic descent, all though as scientist, patient and conscientious, he proposes to attempt the solution of this and other prob Iems by another northern expedition. On his next trip MT. Stefanson will be accompanied by two eminent a.n- thropologists, whose ethnic investiga- tions will probably shed much light on the origins of the northern tribes.
 Many attempts have been made to belittle the originality and value of Mir Stefanson's discoveries, and it IS alleged that the ''blonde Eskimos' were known to other explorers long before the young Canadian explorer was born, in a pioneer settlement on Lake Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1870. The Rt. Rev. Gabriel Joseph Ellie Breynat, Roman Catholic bishop of Mackenzie N. w. T., is authority for the statement that an English exp1or- CT, Col1inson by name, announced the discovery some sixty years ago of a tribe of Eskirnos whose features re- sembled those of white men.
 E Additional testirn ony that Stefanson was not the Columbus of the blonde Eskimos is given in what purports to be a passage from a book entitled "A Geological and Historical Grammar 2 written by Thomas Salmon. and pub nshed in ITO. This passage is quot ed as follows:
 sEThe Indians (of the Hudson's Bay Company Settlements) are of the usual stature of other men and of a tawney complexion. In the north of Esquimaux there is a race much whit CT. enemies to the southern Indians, and are supposed to come from Greenland
 All of which may or may not be true-and yet the fact that the Chi nese discovered the art of printing in the sixth century B. c. does not lessen the fame and honors due to John Gutenberg and other European pioneers in the topographic art
 Mr. Stefanson, who proposes to spend the remainder of his life in solving the mysteries of the northland, began early to experience the hardships incident to life in a barren country. When his parents settled in Manitoba, that now rich and fertile Province was sparsely settled. When Stefan son was only year old a famine held Manitoba in it's grasp, and his brother and sister slccumbed to starvation. The cold, too, was intense, over fifty degrees below zero, and the pioneers did not have adequate protection against it It was a case of the sur vival of the .f1ttest, and young Valhjal- mur, by surviving, proved his right to existencee.