399 



these latter have without doubt been set up in the spring-time, 

 especially in May and June, when the Eskimos carried on the 

 "utok" hunting on the sea-ice. 



For the rest, it appears from the experience of the expe- 

 ditions, that the small Baiigifer Pearyi only occurs in relatively 

 small numbers in Ellesmere Land and North Devon Ч On the 

 other hand, apart from the eastern part of North Devon and 

 corresponding stretches in the eastern Ellesmere Land, where 

 the land is high and covered with glaciers, the musk-ox occurs 

 in considerable quantities. The latter, however, which lives in 

 local, small herds, can never become a constant and perman- 

 ent means of livelihood. 



After being hunted for some time, perhaps as a rule 

 after a single year, the reduced herds of musk-ox can no 

 longer yield the considerable quantities of food for storing, 

 which are required for men and dogs, and the Eskimos must 

 move on. 



These Eskimo bands cannot have been very numerous. 

 They were most probably groups of ca. 8 — 10 families, which 

 separated off from the constantly inhabited Eskimo centres on 

 the coast of the mainland and the Barren Grounds. Some have 

 again returned home; others have been enticed so far away, 

 that new generations have perhaps grown up, before the band 

 has gone under during a famine period in one or other out of 

 the way corner^, or perhaps succeeded in reaching a Green- 

 land coast, where a sure, reserve livelihood could be obtained. 



1 Greely, I.e., Vol.11, p. 363; 0. Sverdrup, Ayt Land, Vols. I— II; R.Peary, 

 Nearest the Pole, pp. 60, 62, 70 etc. 



2 As example of how quickly a tribe, which has difficulties in finding a 

 reserve mode of obtaining food, may die out, I may mention the inhabi- 

 tants of Southampton Island, a small, almost untouched Eskimo tribe, 

 which lived essentially on reindeer hunting with the bow and arrow and 

 numbered 68 persons in 1900. In 1902 a whaler landed a party of 

 Bafflnlanders armed with rifles on the island and these so destroyed the 

 hunting, that the original dwellers all to a man perished of hunger in 

 the course of the winter (A.P.Low, I.e., pp. 187-188). 



