IN NORTHERN MISTS 



Let us suppose that we could repeat the experiment and 

 plant a number of European sealers in Baffin Land, for 

 instance, with their women, together with a greater number of 

 Eskimo, and then cut off all communication with the 

 civilized world. Can we have any doubt as to the kind of 

 culture we should find there if we could come back after 



two hundred 

 years? All the 

 inhabitants would 

 be Eskimo, and 

 we should find few 

 traces of European 

 culture. 



It would 



doubtless seem 

 reasonable to ex- 

 pect that the de- 

 scendants of the 

 ancient Norsemen 

 of Greenland and 

 of the Eskimo 

 with whom they 

 became absorbed 

 should have 

 shown signs in their external appearance of this descent, 

 when discovered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; 

 but unfortunately we have no descriptions of them from 

 that time which allow of any conclusions being drawn on 

 the subject. It is true that Hans Egede says [1741, p. 66] that 

 the Eskimo of Greenland "have broad faces and thick lips, are 

 flat-nosed and of a brownish complexion; though some of 

 them are quite handsome and white " ; but nothing definite 

 can be concluded from this, and in the period after Egede's 

 arrival the natives on the west coast became so mixed that 

 it is now hopeless to look for any of the original race. It is, 

 however, remarkable that Graah found in 1 829-1 831 Eskimo on 

 104 



Salmon fishing in Vazdal by Ketilsfjord in the 

 Eastern Settlement (see map. Vol. I, p. 265), where 

 the " birch forest " is as high as 20 ft. From a pho- 

 tograph by Dr. T. N. Krabbe [A. S. Jensen, 1910] 



