214 H. P. STEENSBY. 
been destroyed by Eskimo crowds coming from the north, while the 
“Eysterbygd” in the present district of Julianehaab was overwhelmed 
by crowds which came from the east coast. 
Admitting the correctness of this as well as of my stated views, 
there can be no doubt that these Eskimo crowds which advanced both 
from the north and from the east represent Neoeskimo. The previously 
found traces of small Eskimo groups might perhaps, on the other hand, 
be ascribed to Palæeskimo; or they might possibly even be due to Neo- 
eskimo hordes of pioneers. | 
Yet it seems to me most doubtful whether Palæeskimo can have 
penetrated down into the Subarctic regions in South Greenland. Оп’ 
the other hand they have no doubt existed on the northern part of the 
west coast in the district of the present Polar Eskimo and from Melville 
Bay some further south; the old settlements from the stone age in the 
interior parts of Disco Bay probably also go back to Palæeskimo times. 
Likewise it occurs to me that the conditions found in the northern part 
of the east coast of Greenland by the Danmark Expedition bear witness 
to the fact that the north east coast was first inhabited by Palæeskimo, 
and that later, and after a good while had elapsed since the first settle- 
ment which was probably extinct, a new settlement of immigrating crowds 
of Neoeskimo grew up. 
The observations made by the ethnographer of the Danmark Ex- 
pedition, CHR. BEnDIx THostrupt, on the basis of the condition of the 
objects of culture and specially on the basis of the condition of the re- 
mains of houses speak decidedly in favour of this view. I will quote 
his observations. “We can distinguish between three different peri- 
ods of settlement. Between the oldest and the second period, to 
judge from the ruins, there has been a long stretch of time —several 
hundred years! But between the second-last and the latest period the 
difference in age has not been nearly so great.” Later he declares that 
the Eskimo of the third settlement (or third immigration) “can hardly be 
said to represent an independent, new immigration, because they only 
include a couple of families.” , 
We have therefore — it seems — in reality two different immigra- 
tions to the north-east coast of Greenland. They are distinctive in 
time, and they appear with a different stamp as regards economic cul- 
ture. On land the oldest immigrants carried on musk-ox hunting on 
an extensive scale. The later immigrants have hunted the reindeer, 
and on the sea, besides seal hunting, they have also carried on whale 
hunting, which one can conclude partly from Thostrup’s observations 
that they possessed umiaks and partly from the bones of whales and 
whalebone, and also from their apparatus being made ог whalebone. 
The later immigrants built the small rectangular houses, whereas the 
1 THOSTRUP, pp. 335 sqq. 
