THE ESKIMOS: THEIR ORIGIN 27 



collision with them for 400 years after they had 

 effected their settlement, and, if an argument may 

 be drawn from silence, they did not even meet any 

 inhabitants. They did, however, find ruined dwell- 

 ings and stone implements which had belonged to 

 some previous occupants. On them they bestowed 

 the name Skroellings, or Weaklings, for they thought 

 that the people who had such possessions as these 

 must have been but a feeble folk. 



It is probable that the Eskimos had their settle- 

 ments further north, and that these ruined huts 

 represented temporary sojourns only in the more 

 southern districts of Greenland. 



Perhaps it may be safe to conclude that the 

 Skroellings were established in the higher latitudes 

 of Greenland by the eighth or ninth century. 



It is, however, in the fourteenth and the early part 

 of the fifteenth centuries that they come forcibly 

 into history. The Scandinavian colonies were then 

 annihilated. This annihilation is said to have been 

 due to the attacks of the Skroellings, though there 

 were probably other causes at work as well, such as 

 famine and plague. But whatever happened, 

 Greenland became from that time forward an un- 

 known land until it was opened up once more by the 

 Mission of Hans Egede in the year 1721. The 

 Arctic Wanderers, too, remained in obscurity until 

 they were re-introduced to the larger world under 

 the French name of Esquimaux. 



