IN JULIANESHAAB. 237 



can arise neither from the course of time, vegetation, or 

 decay, we may assume that this is the remainder of the 

 old roof, and that the builder, like his descendants in 

 Iceland, covered his house with sods. The space in the 

 enclosure of the stone circle is covered with pieces of 

 rock. If time has not set its teeth quite in vain upon 

 the old walls, the population of Greenland have at all 

 events done their best to destroy them ; for all the stones, 

 with which the inhabitants of Igalliko build their houses 

 in the present day, have been hewn by Northman hands 

 so beautifully even, that they make splendid building 

 materials. A Greenlander would not give himself such 

 trouble, but takes it from the Norse buildings, only 

 allowing those to remain which require great strength to 

 move. 



Some hundred steps off lie the ruins of another seem- 

 ingly smaller building, unenclosed. Still further on, a 

 plain stone wall is to be seen. On the grass, too, to- 

 wards the end of the Fjord, lay heaped-up masses of stone, 

 which apparently can only have been the work of human 

 hands. On a small low island, too, in the Fjord, facing 

 the harbour, the foundations of some Norse buildings 

 exist. Perhaps these were used partly as dwellings for 

 the servants, partly for magazines; that on the island 

 was possibly a place of refuge in time of threatened 

 danger. The ancient settlers had their building materials 

 very near at hand. Immediately behind Igalliko, which 

 itself stands upon a steep slope rising from the sea, is a 

 terrace-shaped row of red rocks. This stone, which has 

 many perpendicular clefts, and forms as steep declivities, 

 is a red sedimentary kind of sandstone which in its under 

 strata is harder, has more quartz in it, and is lighter; 



