P7^of. NordensliioM — Exijedition to Greenland. 415 



In one of the other heaps of bones a flat stone was found, so large 

 as to require the united efforts of several Greenlanders to turn it. 

 They declared that the workshop for the fabrication of stone instru- 

 ments must have been situated on that spot, and expected accordingly 

 to find a great quantity of chips in its vicinity, which — however, the 

 result of their searches did not confirm. 



The kitchenmiddens outside the large cot rested on a low slab 

 of gneiss, separated from it by a thin layer of turf, in which were no 

 traces of any pieces of bone, and which had therefore been formed 

 before the place was inhabited. In other respects this turf, of which 

 specimens were taken away, was perfectly like the earth, which was 

 mixed with bones and stone-chips. Here, there were no Mytilus 

 shells, though these are everywhere else found around Greenland 

 dwellings — an indication that the inhabitants were not formerly 

 obliged to have recourse to the species of famine-food, whereof these 

 bear witness. 



To discover the various animal forms that had here been the prey 

 of the hunter. Dr. Oberg collected a quantity of bones, in which 

 work the Greenlanders took a lively interest, usually determining 

 with great certainty the species to which the pieces of bone had 

 belonged. 



The following species could be ascertained : 



Cervus tar-andus. 

 TJrsus maritimus. 

 Trichechus rosmarus. 

 Cystophora cristata. 

 Phoca barbata 



Flioca Grcenlandica. 



„ vitulina. 

 Delphinapterus leucas. 



Even if we suppose that this spot was'first inhabited shortly after 

 the Esquimaux entered Greenland over Smith's Sound, its age will still 

 be scarcely more than five hundred years, a period generally too short 

 to show marks of the slow but continuous changes to which the 

 organic world is subjected. Neither do the kitchenmiddens of Kaja 

 contain any other forms of animals than those still living on the 

 coast of Greenland. Nevertheless we obtain here an interesting con- 

 firmation of the changes that the ice-fjord has undergone. The 

 Walrus, Phoca barbata^ Cystophora cristata, no longer ventures into 

 this long ice-blockaded fjord ; and even the bear has now become so 

 scarce, in the colonies of North Greenland south of the Waigat that 

 most of the Danes resident in those parts have never seen it. The 

 remnants of bones in the kitchenmiddens on the other hand prove 

 that these animals were abundant there formerly, and are conse- 

 quently an evidence that the fjord at Jakobshafn was less filled 



1 The views we got of the land inwards from a high mountain near Kaja showed, 

 however, clearly, that the often repeated story of a strait passing completely across 

 Greenland has arisen from a misunderstanding of the Greenlanders' accounts of the 

 long narrow fjord. We received from the Greenlanders at Auleitsiviksfjord a similar 

 account of tlie southern arm of that fjord ; but on questioning them more closely, it 

 appeared that they only meant that the distance to the extiemity of the fjord was, 

 according to their notions, immensely great. Krantz (in the middle of the last 

 century) speaks of the fjord as quite full of ice. It was then so long before 

 Giesecke's time, when, according to Brown, " this inlet was quite open for boats" 

 (Quart. Journ. Geol. Soc, xxvii. p. 684.) 



