274 



famine may ensue. Here and there the even surface of the 

 winter ice may be broken by an iceberg or an ice-pack which 

 is firmly fixed in the ice and surrounded by a snow-drive. It 

 happens frequently also that the changing wind may carry a 

 swimming ice-block forwards and backwards and thus a stretch 

 of open water is maintained, from the margins of which the 

 Eskimos can carry on their hunting. 



Along the coasts a fixed ice-base is formed which is frozen 

 solidly to the land; its surface corresponds with the high-water 

 mark. Outside this ice-base the ice rises and falls with high 

 and low water, and the boundary is formed by a break and 

 sometimes also by washed-up ice-masses. Just above the ice- 

 base, on the fixed land, where the coast is low and has a 

 supply of stones for building material, the Eskimos set up 

 their winter-houses with the low^ passage and skin windows 

 towards the sea. It sometimes happens that this ice-base 

 remains throughout the summer; thus Kane found an ice-base 

 several years old vvhicli was 10 m thick and 40 m broad in 

 Smith Sounds 



Several things would indicate that the lands round Smith 

 Sound are subject to a regular and slow sinking, in contrast 

 to the rising which is believed to have been noticed along the 

 north coast of North America from Coronation Gulf westwards ^ 

 This sinking was already noticed by Kane and was strongly 

 maintained later by Peary. As evidence of the sinking Astrup 

 states, that he has seen remains of houses now under the sur- 

 face of the water on the south-western side of Saunders Island •■. 

 Knud Rasmussen narrates that it is the Eskimos' own view that 

 the land has sunk and that the sea is spreading. At the settle- 



1 cited from G. Hartmann: Der Eintluss des Treibeisses auf die Bodengestalt 



des Polargebiets. Leipzig 1891. 

 - H. H. Howorth: Recent Elevations of the Earth's Surface in the Northern 



Circumpolar Region. Journ. Ro\. Geug. Soc. Vol. XLIII. London 1873. 

 3 E. Astrup: Blandt Nordpolens Naboer. Christiania 1895, p. 318. R.Peary: 



Northward over the Great Ice. Vol. 11, p. 173. 



