I always took Eskimo Nell to be, as you suggest, a parody or pastiche of the sort of thing Robert Service wrote so earnestly; & probably by an Englishman rather than American. R Service doesn't come across in his work as a very humorous sort of man, of the sort who would wish to pastiche his own work. Still & all, you never know: there was the time when Graham Greene kept winning New Statesman literary competition 2nd prizes with parodies of his own novels.   — I still like my Coward·&·Caribou theory Though.