390 THE MUSK-OX. 



sort of the Esquimaux. We found there several old 

 ruins of huts, some of them with bones strewn about 

 them, which showed that they were not of very an- 

 cient date. Among these bones, which were mostly 

 of the walrus, seal, and bears, I found a part of the 

 head of a musk-ox, and in such a position as ap- 

 peared to render it probable that the animal of 

 which it had formed a part had been the food of the 

 former inhabitants of the ruin. Upon referring the 

 matter to Kalutunah, he told me that the musk-ox 

 was supposed to have been once numerous along the 

 entire coast, and that they are still occasionally seen. 

 No longer ago than the previous winter, a hunter of 

 Wolstenholme Sound, near a place called Oomeak, had 

 come upon two animals and killed one of them. It 

 would seem from this circumstance that the musk-ox 

 is not yet extinct in Greenland, as naturalists have 

 supposed. 



One day of my stay in the valley was occupied 

 with running a set of levels down from the foot of 

 the glacier to the sea, by which I found the former 

 to be ninety-two feet above the latter ; and another 

 day was passed in hunting. 



It would be impossible to convey an adequate idea of 

 the immense numbers of the little auks which swarmed 

 around us. The slope on both sides of the valley 

 rises at an angle of about forty-five degrees to a dis- 

 tance of from three hundred to five hundred feet, 

 where it meets the cliffs, which stand about seven 

 hundred feet higher. These hill-sides are composed 

 of the loose rocks which have been split off' from the 

 cliffs by the frost. The birds crawl among these 

 rocks, winding far in through narrow places, and 

 there deposit each a single egg and hatch their young, 



