Moreover the Strait is usually full of ice, which frequently
becomes a solid mass from shore to shore. Therefore it would be
no strange thing if some primitive savages, in hunting for seals
or polar bears, crossed the Strait, even though they had no
boats. Today the people on both sides of the Strait belong to the
American race. They still retain traditions of a time when their
ancestors crossed this narrow strip of water. The Thilanottines
have a legend that two giants once fought fiercely on the Arctic
Ocean. One would have been defeated had not a man whom he had
befriended cut the tendon of his adversary's leg. The wounded
giant fell into Bering Strait and formed a bridge across which
the reindeer entered America. Later came a strange woman bringing
iron and copper. She repeated her visits until the natives
insulted her, whereupon she went underground with her fire-made
treasures and came back no more. Whatever may have been the
circumstances that led the earliest families to cross from Asia
to America, they little recked that they had found a new
continent and that they were the first of the red race.

Unless the first Americans came to the new continent by way of
the Kurile and Aleutian Islands, it was probably their misfortune
to spend many generations in the cold regions of northeastern
Asia and northwestern America. Even if they reached Alaska by the
Aleutian route but came to the islands by way of the northern end
of the Kamchatkan Peninsula, they must have dwelt in a place
where the January temperature averages - 10 degrees F. and where
there are frosts every month in the year. If they came across
Bering Strait, they encountered a still more severe climate. The
winters there are scarcely worse than in northern Kamchatka, but
the summers are as cold as the month of March in New York or