Anyone who knows Eskimos well, and who has also traveled in the far East, cannot but notice that the rugged, stocky men of the Arctic have many characteristics of the Asiatics.
Their talent of imitation is one of them. Their complete lack of sense of danger when facing a white man’s invention that is absolutely new to them, is another.
Twenty years ago, I recall, a Belgian engineer on the Hankow-Pekin Railway complained to me of the utter recklessness of the Chinese in the company’s employ. The line had been running hardly a year then, and scores of Chinese were being trained to take the place of high-class European laborers—such as engine drivers.
According to the harassed official, all the Chinese were willing workers, exceedingly adaptable and absolutely fearless. They learned the practical side of their job far quicker than a white man would, but they had no notion of what danger was so far as the engine they were entrusted with was concerned. They knew, for instance, that they could obtain a certain speed which they could judge by a certain instrument with an arrow, the figures of which they could not, of course, read.
They also knew that they were not allowed to let the arrow go further on the dial than a given point.
But at the beginning they could not see the difference between a straight railway track and a curved one. In consequence, they would never slow up at a sharp curve. When the engine happened to be running at sixty miles per hour—off the track she would go with disastrous results. If by any chance the Chinese engine driver escaped without injury, he had learned his lesson and would not make the same mistake twice. But a lot of them were killed. Furthermore, the engines were invariably smashed. It was very costly to the company. As the Belgian official said, “An Asiatic can learn only through bitter personal experience.”
The same applies to Eskimos. Here is one of many examples. One year our steamer brought a gasoline launch to one of our trading posts in Hudson Bay. We wished to use her for towing the barges, full of cargo, ashore.
The skipper chose an intelligent looking Eskimo from the crowd and, in a couple of hours, had taught him how to run the engine. The Husky had never in his life seen a gasoline launch before but he tackled his new job with high glee and no signs of nervousness whatsoever.
The first time he was alone in charge, he ran the engine beautifully. He towed a string of barges to the shore but, having no idea of speed, he slipped his tow too late. The result was that when he was going around at full speed and heading back for the steamer, the heavy barges, which had too much way on, crashed into the wharf, knocked it down and threw fifty Eskimos or so into the icy water—happily without fatal results.
Meanwhile our Husky friend, who had seen the accident but who did not have time to work out in his head the pros and cons of the question, was reaching the ship head-on at ten knots an hour. Heedless of our shouts of warning, he stopped his engine, then reversed her when he was exactly two feet from the steamer’s side.
There was an awful crash, a cloud of smoke and our new gasoline launch disappeared to the bottom like a stone. The only thing that was left was a thoroughly frightened Eskimo floating aimlessly on the troubled waters, whom we fished out with the help of one of the winches.