An Anthropogeographical Study of the Origin of the Eskimo Culture. 85 
and made lengthy sojourns among the Polar Eskimo, they came into more 
regular connection with civilization and its products, of which they had 
special use for wood, and, besides, quickly learned to appreciate firearms. 
It was just in the latter year — 1909 — that the Danish Eskimo-explorer, 
Knup RASMUSSEN, who, even during the years 1903—1904, had together 
with L. MyL1ius-ERICHSEN lived among the Polar Eskimo, began a series of 
new expeditions to these regions, and along with this some undertakings for 
the benefit of this small tribe. Thus, in 1909 Knup RASMUSSEN conducted 
the establishment of a missionary station near North Star Bay, and later 
on a trading station was founded, likewise under his auspices, at Umanark 
near Wolstenholm Sound. These events and undertakings have been instrumental 
in greatly improving the conditions pertaining to the means of subsistence 
of the Polar Eskimo, as in their Polar Bear and fox skins they have products 
which insure them no small purchasing power. 
Notwithstanding this, the economie culture of the Eskimo has altered 
but slightly, and at any rate it is yet easy to form an opinion of the tribe’s 
original conditions of life and economic culture in the course of the year. 
I have lately treated this question in M. о. G., Vol. 34, (Contributions to the 
Ethnology and Anthropogeography of the Polar Eskimo, pp. 268 sqq.), to which 
the reader is referred for fuller notes on the subject; here it will suffice to 
give a brief survey. 
What strikes us as most peculiar as regards the geography of these 
northern regions is their long summer-day and their unbroken winter-night, 
each of about equal duration. In the regions near Cape York the winter- 
night lasts about 102 days; or to the 11th of February. This circumstance 
does not, however, play such a direct röle in the Eskimo culture as might 
be expected. In these high latitudes it is the smooth ice-sheet of winter 
which is also one of the most important and stipulating factors. Therefore 
it is, also, that an Arctic Eskimo tribe has been able to settie on the east 
side of the Smith-Sound passage, and not on the west side, filled with 
masses of Arctic ice coming from the north. On the east side there are the 
two large indentations, Inglefield Gulf and Wolstenholm Sound, and it is 
inside the groups of islands situated at their mouths that the smooth winter- 
ice has free opportunity to form. The summer, or the season of the year 
when there is open water, lasts only 3 months, while the winter with its 
ice-sheet on the fjords, and especially on the stretches of sea situated inside 
the islands at the mouths of Inglefield Gulf and Wolstenholm Sound, lasts 
9 months of the year. There is an immense difference between the economic 
life of the Eskimo in the summer and in the winter; but the locating of 
their settlements is somewhat similar. The Polar Eskimo pitches his summer 
tent more or less in the same favourable locality where he or his kinsmen 
have their winter-houses. 
Nowadays their chief summer occupations are whale hunting and the 
hunting of seals from a kayak. But previous to about 1862—63 when they 
