64 NEW LAND. 



So, then, trappers had been here ; but when ? The old, ruined 

 traps, with their narrow entrance and stone slabs to shut in the 

 fox, gave no answer, but it must have been long since. 



The following morning we continued our journey in better 

 weather and circumstances than on the previous day. During 

 our drive we came to a long, narrow peninsula, covered with gritty 

 soil and patches of grass, and with a large open lane outside it. 

 In the lane were a number of eider-ducks, chattering and 

 quacking, and it all looked so inviting that we made a halt to 

 examine the place more carefully. We had not gone far before 

 we stood amazed. What was that? A low, ring-shaped stone 

 wall ! And still another, and so on all over the point ! Here and 

 there also were ruined heaps of stones, like a bee-hive in shape, 

 supported by weather-stained, greyish- white bones ; the jaws 

 or ribs of the whale. We had, without doubt, come on a dead 

 Eskimo settlement. The ring-shaped walls of stone were th'e 

 remains of their dwellings, and the grey stone bee-hives their 

 larders. We examined the whole of this dead settlement with 

 great interest. How long could it be since it was deserted ? This 

 unexpected finding of ourselves amid the marks of human habita- 

 tion gave us a sudden chilling realization of the loneliness and 

 barrenness of the country. We peeped into the larders the 

 grass was growing green in them between the stones ; we walked 

 from one tent-ring to another; in the centre of the rings was a 

 big tuft of grass: they were the marks left where the lamps 

 had stood. Out on the beach, by the lane, was a broad bear-track. 

 Fosheim grew keen at once ; it might be a fresh one. But no 

 the dogs would not follow it up. Maybe it had been there for ten 

 or twenty years, for everything keeps up here in the north. 



The place was evidently the site of an ancient Eskimo 

 summer settlement. The pretty tongue of land, with its sheltered 

 creek on the right, and its fishing-ground out on the fjord on the 

 left, was as if especially created for trapping and fishing. The 

 eider-duck, which resolutely keep to the lanes as long as there is 

 open water, knew well enough what they were doing when they 

 came here. These birds are obliged to keep in open water as long 

 as they can, for their broods only begin to fly very late in the 



