PHYSICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE DENES. 71

patches of forest or rugged, craggy mountains almost defies belief. On a poor
trail they are undoubtedly much faster than a good horse, and even under
fairly good conditions they make, in the long run, better time than most
ponies, because able to keep up their usttal speed through spots which would
arrest the progress of a heavy animal. 1 was once overtaken by a Déné who
had covered on foot in one night a distance which had kept my horse on
the move for the best part of two days.

Their fortitude in times of bodily disconfort is on a par with their
powers of spasmodic activity. “I have,” observes Hearne, “more than once
seen the Northern Indians, at the end of three or four days fasting, as merry
and jocose on the subject as if they had voluntarily imposed it on them-
selves”!, Hrdlicka remarks also of the Navahoes that they “can bear pro-
longed loss of sleep better than the average white, and the same rule applies
to extremes in diet and exposure’?

Richardson writes of the Dog-Ribs that few traces of the stoicism attri-
buted to the red races exist among them. “They shrink from pain,” he says,
“show little daring, express their fears without disguise on all occasions,
imaginary or real, shed tears readily’®. This may be irue of the particular
tribe mentioned, though I am strongly inclined to believe that such a conduct
on their part was a consequence of their usual plan to attract the bounties
of the whites. It is certainly not applicable to the nation as a whole. Hearne
is much more correct when he writes that “they bear bodily pain with great
fortitude’, During upwards of a score of years passed in the midst of, or
constant intercourse with, five distinct tribes, when I had also some oppor-
tunities of conversing with a few eastern Dénés, I have not seen any other
man weeping for any cause than a Babine, who spent his time in the loud
lamentations for the dead which have a sort of ritual character, and cannot
be compared to crying under emotional impulse. The women, on the other
hand, are ever ready with a copious supply of tears to shed almost at will.

Pathological Conditions.

As to the pathological disorders most common amongst the Déne nation,
they affect mostly the eyes, the lungs and the nerves, as well the delicate
functions of the female organism. “It is rare to mect a man of fifty among
[the Nahanais] with sound eyes’, wrote a few years ago a trader® who has
passed a number of years in the close vicinity of that tribe. This is an evi-
dent exageration; but it cannot be denied that snow, smoke and uncleanly
habits have, in many cases, a most deleterious influence over the visual

1 “A Journey from Prince of Wales Fort”, p. 70.
2 “Observations on the Navaho” (Amer. Anthropologist, p. 342).
3 “Arctic Searching Expedition”, vol. II, p. 18.

* Ubi supra, p. 345.

5 J. C. Callbreath, in Report on the Yukon District, p. 196B.