52 RISE AND FALL OF THE GREENLAND COAST. 



by ruins of houses being found high above the water, in places 

 where no Greenlander would ever think of building them now. 

 On Hunde (Dog) Island, in the district of Egedesminde, there are 

 said to be two such houses, and two little lakes with marine shells 

 naturalised in them, and remains of fish-bones, &c, on the shores. 

 I only heard this when it was too late, so that to my regret I 

 had to leave the country without paying a visit to this remarkable 

 locality. 



2. Fall. — This has been long known ; but it is only within the 

 last thirty years that special attention has been drawn to the sub- 

 ject, chiefly by Dr. Tingel, 1 who passed some time in Greenland. 

 The facts are tolerably well known, how houses are found jammed 

 in by ice in places where they never would have been built by the 

 natives, as Proven, and so on. It may, however, be as well to 

 recapitulate these proofs. 



Between 1777 and 1779 Arctander noticed that in Igalliko Fjord 

 (lat. 60° 48' N.) a small rocky island, " about a gun-shot from the 

 shore," was entirely submerged at spring-tides ; yet on it were the 

 walls of a house (dating from the period of the old Icelandic 

 colonists) 52 feet in length, 30 in breadth, 5 in thickness, and 

 6 high. Fifty years later the whole of it was so submerged that 

 only the ruins rose above the water. The settlement of Julianeshaab 

 was founded in 1776 in the same fjord ; but the foundations of the 

 old store-house, built on an island called " The Castle," are now dry 

 only at very low water. Again, the remains of native houses are 

 seen under -water near the colony of Fredrikshaab (lat. 62° N). 

 Near the great glacier which projects into the sea between Fred- 

 rikshaab and Fiskernaesset, in 62° 32' N., there is a group of islands 

 called Fulluarlalik, on the shores of which are the ruins of dwell- 

 ings which are now overflowed by the tide. In 1758 the Moravian 

 Unitas Fratrum founded the mission establishment of Lichtenfels, 

 about 2 miles from Fiskernaesset (lat. 63° 4') ; but in thirty or forty 

 years they were obliged once, " perhaps twice," to remove the frames 

 or posts on which they rested their large omiahs, or " women's " (seal- 

 skin) " boats." The posts may yet be seen beneath the water. 



To the north-east of Godthaab (lat. 64° 10' 36" N.,long. 51° 45' 5" 

 w. 2 ) on a point called Vildmansnaas (Savage Point) by Hans Egede, 

 in 1721-36, several Greenland families lived. These dwellings are 

 now desolate, being overflowed at high tide. At Nappersoak, 



1 ' Proc. Geol. Soc.,' vol. ii. p. 208. 



2 According to observations by tbe late Capt. v. Falbe, of tbe Royal Danish 

 Navy, furnished to me by Cajit. H. L. M. Holm, of the Hydrographic Depart- 

 ment, Copenhagen. 



