with wash, and when the ice melts the aggraded channels appear as long ridges of gravel and sand known as eskers. It has been thought that similar ridges are sometimes formed in valleys cut in the ice from top to bottom, and even that they rise from gravel and sand lodged in super-glacial channels. The latter at least is probably rare, as the surface streams have usually high gradients, swift currents and smooth bottoms, and hence give little opportunity for lodgment. In the case of ice-sheets, too, in which eskers are chiefly developed, there is usually no surface material except at the immediate edge, where the ice is thin and its layers upturned” (T. C. Chamberlin and R. D. Salisbury, Geology, Processes and their Results). Eskers are to be distinguished from kames (q.v.).
ESKILSTUNA, a town of Sweden in the district (län) of
Södermanland, on the Hjelmar river, which unites lakes Hjelmar
and Mälar, 65 m. W. of Stockholm by rail. Pop. (1900) 13,663.
The place is mentioned in the 13th century, and is said to derive
its name from Eskil, an English missionary who suffered martyrdom
on the spot. It rose into importance in the reign of Charles
X., who bestowed on it considerable privileges, and gave the first
impulse to its manufacturing activity. It is the chief seat in
Sweden of the iron and steel industries, its cutlery being especially
noted, while damascened work is a specialty. There is
a technical school for the metal industries. There are, in the
town or its neighbourhood, great engineering, gun-making, and
rolling and polishing works and breweries. The largest mechanical
works are those of Munktell and Tunafors. The Karl Gustaf
Stads rifle factory was established in 1814.
ESKIMO, Eskimos or Esquimaux (a corruption of the Abnaki
Indian Eskimantsic or the Ojibway Ashkimeq, both terms meaning
“those who eat raw flesh”: they call themselves “Innuit,”
“the people”), a North American Indian people, inhabiting
the arctic coast of America from Greenland to Alaska, and a small
portion of the Asiatic shore of Bering Strait. On the American
shores they are found, in broken tribes, from East Greenland
to the western shores of Alaska—never far inland, or south of
the region where the winter ice allows seals to congregate.
Even on hunting expeditions they never travel more than 30 m.
from the coast. Save a slight admixture of European settlers,
they are the only inhabitants of both sides of Davis Strait and
Baffin Bay. They extend as far south as about 50° N. lat. on
the eastern side of America, and in the west to 60° on the eastern
shore of Bering Strait, while 55° to 60° are their southern limits
on the shore of Hudson Bay. Throughout all this range there
are no other tribes save where the Kennayan and Ugalenze
Indians (of western America) come down to the shore to fish.
The Aleutians are closely allied to the Eskimo in habits and
language. H. J. Rink divides the Eskimo into the following
groups, the most eastern of which would have to travel nearly
5000 m. to reach the most western: (1) The East Greenland
Eskimo, few in number, every year advancing farther south, and
coming into contact with the next section. (2) The West
Greenlanders, civilized, living under the Danish crown, and
extending from Cape Farewell to 74° N. lat. (3) The Northern-most
Greenlanders—the Arctic Highlanders of Sir John Ross—confined
to Smith, Whale, Murchison and Wolstenholme Sounds,
north of the Melville Bay glaciers. These—the most isolated
and uncivilized of all the Eskimo—had no boats or bows and
arrows until about 1868. (4) The Labrador Eskimo, mostly
civilized. (5) The Eskimo of the middle regions, occupying the
coasts from Hudson Bay to Barter Island, beyond Mackenzie
river, inhabiting a stretch of country 2000 m. in length and 800
in breadth. (6) The Western Eskimo, from Barter Island to the
western limits in America. (7) The Asiatic Eskimo.
The Eskimo are not a tall race, their height varying from 5 ft. 4 in. to 5 ft. 10 in., but men of 6 ft. are met. Both men and women are muscular and active, the former often inclining to fat. The faces of both have a pleasing, good-humoured expression, and not infrequently are even handsome. The typical face is broadly oval, flat, with fat cheeks; forehead not high, and rather retreating; teeth good, though, owing to the character of the food, worn down to the gums in old age; nose very flat; eyes rather obliquely set, small, black and bright; head largish, and covered with coarse black hair, which the women fasten up into a knot on the top, and the men clip in front and allow to hang loose and unkempt behind. Their skulls are of the mesocephalic type, the height being greater than the breadth; according to Davis, 75 is the index of the latter and 77 of the former. Some of the tribes slightly compress the skulls of their new-born children laterally (Hall), but this practice is a very local one. The men have usually a slight moustache, but no whiskers, and rarely any beard. The skin has generally a “bacony” feel, and when cleaned of the smoke, grease and other dirt—the accumulation of which varies according to the age of the individual—is only so slightly brown that red shows in the cheeks of the children and young women. The hands and feet are small and well formed. The Eskimo dress entirely in skins of the seal, reindeer, bear, dog, or even fox, the first two being, however, the most common. The men’s and women’s dress is much the same, a jacket suit, the trousers tucked into seal-skin boots. The jacket has a hood, which in cold weather is used to cover the head, leaving only the face exposed. The women’s jacket has a large hood for carrying a child and an absurd-looking tail behind, which is, however, usually tucked up. The women’s trousers are usually ornamented with eider-duck neck feathers or embroidery of native dyed leather; their boots, which are of white leather, or (in Greenland) dyed of various colours, reach over the knees, and in some tribes are very wide at the top, thus giving them an awkward appearance and a clumsy waddling walk. In winter two suits are worn, one with the hair inside, the other with it outside. They also sometimes wear shirts of bird-skins, and stockings of dog or young reindeer skins. Their clothes are very neatly made, fit beautifully, and are sewn with “sinew-thread,” with a bone needle if a steel one cannot be had. In person the Eskimo are usually filthy, and never wash. Infants are, however, sometimes cleaned by being licked by their mother before being put into the bag of feathers which serves as their bed, cradle and blankets.
In summer the Eskimo live in conical skin tents, and in winter usually in half-underground huts of stone, turf, earth and bones, entered by a long tunnel-like passage, which can only be traversed on all fours. Sometimes, if residing temporarily at a place, they will erect neat round huts of blocks of snow with a sheet of ice for a window. In the roof are deposited their spare harpoons, &c; and from it is suspended the steatite basin-like lamp, the flame of which, the wick being of moss, serves as fire and light. On one side of the hut is the bench which is used as sofa, seats and common sleeping place. The floor is usually very filthy, a pool of blood or a dead seal being often to be seen there. Ventilation is almost non-existent; and after the lamp has blazed for some time, the heat is all but unbearable. In the summer the wolfish-looking dogs lie outside on the roof of the huts, in the winter in the tunnel-like passage just outside the family apartment. The Western Eskimo build their houses chiefly of planks, merely covered on the outside with green turf. The same Eskimo have, in the more populous places, a public room for meetings. “Council chambers” are also said to exist in Labrador, but are only known in Greenland by tradition. Sometimes in south Greenland and in the Western Eskimo country the houses are made to accommodate several families, but as a rule each family has a house to itself.
The Eskimo are solely hunters and fishers, and derive most of their food from the sea. Their country allows of no cultivation; and beyond a few berries, roots, &c., they use no vegetable food. The seal, the reindeer and the whale supply the bulk of their food, as well as their clothing, light, fuel, and frequently also, when driftwood is scarce or unavailable, the material for various articles of domestic economy. Thus the Eskimo canoe is made of seal-skin stretched on a wooden or whalebone frame, with a hole in the centre for the paddler. It is driven by a bone-tipped double-bladed paddle. A waterproof skin or entrail dress is tightly fastened round the mouth of the hole so that, should the canoe overturn, no water can enter. A skilful paddler can turn a complete somersault, boat and all, through the water.
