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Show 104 BASIS OF AMERICAN HISTORY [ 1500 peditions, they seem to have held their undesirable foothold secure against all attacks from the interior. The earlier southern extension of the Eskimo has given rise to much discussion, conjecture, and assertion. 1 "^^ hat they formerly occupied the Atlantic coast as fir south as New England is not only possible but probable. That they ranged south of that territory is unlikely. To the problem of the origin of the Eskimo, or, better, their point of dispersion, have been applied many vagaries of reasoning and guess. The favorite view has been that their origin was Asiatic, and that crossing Bering Strait they pushed along the arctic coast and down the Atlantic until apparently checked by counter influences. This idea, based on a popular preference for Asiatic beginnings, was strengthened by a superficial facial resemblance of the Eskimo to Mongoloid types, and later by the belief of some scientific authorities in a derivation from the early cave men of Europe.' This theory is founded upon very scanty material and equally loose ethnological reasoning. Without entering into the details of the controversy, . there can be no doubt that the weight of authority to- day is not only in favor of considering the Eskimo as essentially American in type but also as American in origin, so far as origins can be traced at all.^ The 1 Packard, in American Naturalist, 1885, p. 471. 1 Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, 233; John Fiske, D « - covery of America, 17, |