FROM THULE TO HUMBOLDT'S GLACIER 



Tornge's house was large and beautifully built ; it was of 

 the type called Samisulik, containing a large main room with a 

 small room at the side, both provided with benches. In the 

 small side room his daughter and son-in-law had been living. 

 A short distance away we found an unusually large ruin, which 

 had an inside circumference of rather more than 30 metres. 

 This points to the probability that local hunting conditions 

 must have been, also during an earlier period, ideal. The head- 

 land where the houses were situated was full of gneiss, inter- 

 sected by many well-grown grass meadows. The place looked 

 kind and smiling ; and there was plenty of water, both in 

 rivulets and lakes. 



Three kilometres from the mainland there is a small, steep, 

 and rather inaccessible island of gneiss, whose entire breadth 

 is about 200 metres, and whose length is 500 metres. On this 

 little island we found no less than ten houses. This strange 

 choice of a place of habitation was probably due to the easy 

 access which it provided to the open sea by Cape Russell and 

 Cape Taney ; besides which, the ice outside the island is 

 probably a better place for the Utut-hunt. 



We named the island Avortungiaq's Island, after Tornge's 

 daughter, who was the first to discover the ruins. 



On another little island nearer land, ruins and houses are 

 also found. The ruins, which are the remains of an earlier 

 Eskimo camp, in this comparatively small bay number about 

 sixty. In addition to the camps here mentioned ruins were 

 found by Cape Russell, Cape Wood, Dallas Bay, and in the 

 bight of Advance Bay. On the stretch from Anoritoq to Cape 

 Agassiz one can thus reckon with at least a hundred houses — 

 a surprising number. Good ice-hunting must have taken place 

 here during spring and autumn, and, in connection with the 

 land-hunting, which must have been uncommonly good for a 

 district like this, it has evidently tempted many people to settle 

 here. The country from the coast inward seems a perfect oasis 

 in this desert, for one must go right down to the south before 

 one finds such a broad expanse of land. 



With the exception of the houses on the gneiss headland 



57 



