44 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 



blubber-lamp, though there is now generally a 

 stove. Along one wall of the room runs a raised 

 wooden platform on which the members of the 

 family sleep together. Glass panes in wooden 

 frames have now replaced the sheets of semi- 

 transparent intestine which used to serve for the 

 admission of light. Outside is a mound of partially 

 grass-covered rubbish, the accumulation of many 

 years of refuse. From the rubbish heaps (kitchen 

 middens) of older Settlements many valuable 

 records of an earlier culture have been disinterred. 

 With a few exceptions Settlements have no roads : 

 smooth and slippery hummocks of rock, at least 

 in the districts where gneiss is the dominant rock, 

 or tussocks of grass and patches of bog have to be 

 traversed with circumspection, and unless the 

 native soft-soled boots are worn it is difficult to 

 avoid falls and wet feet. Pieces of seal flesh and 

 fish are often hung out of reach of the dogs across 

 strips of wood fastened to long upright poles; bones 

 of whales and other animals litter the beach, and 

 dark-red pools lie in depressions on the rocks 

 where the women have cut up recently captured 

 seals. On Manitsok Island, a few miles from 

 Egedesminde, which we visited as guests of Miss 

 Svensgaard, the lady-doctor in charge of the 

 District, is one of the smallest Settlements we saw. 

 A few stone houses, each with its long tunnel- 

 entrance, have been built on a depression between 

 two ice-smoothed hills of gneiss close to the edge 

 of the sea. In front of the houses strips of fish 

 were hung out to dry on cross-bars resting on tall 



