52 H. P. STEENSBY. 
coasts on the south side of the series of sounds which extend from 
Lancaster Sound to Banks Strait”. The English naval officers who 
navigated Lancaster Sound and its continuation started with the 
belief that the southern side must be at least as suitable as the 
northern side, and many of them, like SHERARD OSBORN, concluded 
that the dispersion of the deserted settlements indicated an immi- 
gration from the west along a route which lay several degrees more 
to the north than the north coast of America. Озвовх imagined 
the district round Cape Schelagskoj (about 170° E. long.,) on the north 
coast of Siberia to be the point of their departure, and supported 
this, amongst other things, with a Chukche legend reported by 
WRANGEL about a people which had gone northward to an unknown 
land. Across unknown groups of islands this people was said to have 
reached ‘far north, where a deep and never navigated ocean causes a 
milder climate and, with it, conditions for more affluent existence2. 
From the northern station they followed the southern side of the 
Parry Archipelago to Smith Sound and Greenland without, however, 
getting any knowledge of their kinsmen on the north coast of the 
mainland, who, like another stream of emigrants, are thought to have 
likewise started from Asia along the north coast of America parallel 
with the more northern stream. 
This theory obtained an ardent promulgator in C. R. MARKHAM, 
who supplemented it with Cranz’s old idea that the Eskimo migra- 
tions should be attributed to political disturbances in Central Asia. 
He imagined the Eskimo as originally living from Cape Schelagskoj 
to Bering Strait, whence, it was supposed, they had been ousted by 
pressure from the south along the two mentioned routes. He gets 
at his date by comparing the year 1349, which he supposes to be 
the year for the immigration to Greenland, with the Mongolian wars 
of conquest in Asia. During the centuries which preceded their first 
known appearance in Greenland, there was great unrest among the 
people of Central Asia. ToGsur Bue (с. 1050), DscHENGISCHAN (+ 1227) 
and other lesser chiefs led forth large armies bent on conquest. The 
pressure exerted by these penetrating waves on the tribes of North 
Siberia drove them further towards the north, and this led to the 
forced emigration of several tribes. The ruins of houses on Cape 
Schelagskoj indicate the beginning of the long wandering’. 
This theory considered spontaneously may be enticing. In other 
respects it was soon thoroughly confuted by W. H. Dati’, who was 
a supporter of Rınk’s hypothesis. As a matter of fact it has played 
an important rôle, and may yet crop up again, either in full or in 
1 cf. the maps by Boas, IX and MARKHAM, I, р. 87. 
? Озвовм, Г, р. 260. 
3 С.В. MARKHAM, I and II. 
SAT VIE 
