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the ground or between the boulders on the cliff with a rect- 

 angular ground-plan, which was just so long and broad, that 

 the body could lie in a bent-up position, with the knees up 

 against the breast. The grave-implements lay, not in the grave 

 itself, but at the side, and from a distance the grave looked 

 like an ordinary heap of stones. 



Round about among the cliffs along the coast we here and 

 there find piles of stones in an opening in the cliffs or be- 

 tween a pair of large stone-boulders; these somewhat resemble 

 graves but are in reality food-depots. The principle with these 

 is, that the stones must be so large and heavy that the foxes 

 and dogs cannot push them aside. When we therefore find a 

 cleft or hollow in a cliff, which might readily be covered over, 

 we will also regularly find that it has been used as food-depot 

 and not for a grave. Among the Polar Eskimos the interests 

 of the living are placed before those of the dead. Practically 

 speaking it is certainly impossible to make the depots secure 

 against the bears, so that it is fortunate that these animals are 

 not numerous in the more restricted hunting grounds of the 

 Polar Eskimos. Scattered round about the neighbourhood of 

 the settlement and at the depots along the coast we found al- 

 most everywhere more or less well-preserved, stone fox-traps. 



Down on the coastal plains around the old and more re- 

 cent groups of houses at Umanark we find a very luxuriant 

 grass-vegetation in the summer-lime, which has apparently a 

 very alluring influence on the hares in the winter and spring. 

 About half a kilometer from the coast the last outposts of 

 these grass-oases form some swampy, low-lying places with 

 less vegetation, which lie in the direction from west to east 

 and are bounded on the north and south sides by irregular, 

 stony ground, whilst on the east they change over into more 

 gravelly ground. On the east side of these depressions are 

 constructed one or in a single case two concentric half-circles 

 of small stone-heaps or oblong stones raised on end. 



