290 



far more favourable results had been reached on the southern 

 part of the East coast. 



Following in the wake of Peder Olsen Walløe the 

 Danish naval officer W. A. Graah had in 1828—1831 made 

 an expedition ^) from Nanortalik at the extreme south point 

 of Greenland along the East coast to Dannebrog Ö 

 (65° 15'). Along the whole coast he found a scattered Eskimo 

 population, as to which he collected a great deal of interesting 

 information. 



But the man who has done more than any other to en- 

 large our knowledge of the East- Greenland Eskimo is the 

 still living Captain G. F. Holm whose well-known expedition was 

 made in the years 1883 — 1885^). — Like Walløe and Graah 

 he made his way in an umiak up along the East coast to 

 about 66° latitude, and here in the so-called Angmagsalik 

 District he came across an Eskimo tribe numbering 400 or 

 more souls which had never at any time come into contact 

 with Europeans ^), Holm wintered amongst these Eskimo and 

 he spent ten months together with them. He returned home 

 with a magnificent ethnographic collection, and his ethnogra- 

 phic and ethnological studies*) will always secure him a place 

 in the front rank of Gre ein land explorers. 



It fell to our expedition to form the connecting link bet- 

 ween Holm's and Ryder's researches, as the stretch of 

 coast we were to explore, viz. between circa 66° latitude and 

 Scoresby Sund, had never been trod by a white man. 



As regards the southern part of this stretch of coast, viz. 

 right up to circa 68° lat. N. , a considerable amount of in- 



*) W. A. Graah. Undersøgelsesrejse til Østkysten af Grønland. 



2) Meddelelser om Grønland. Vol. IX P. 53. 



^) We find mentioned Cranz "Historie von Grønland" p. 342 g 10 that 

 rumours about this tribe had spread as far back as the eighteenth century 

 down the East coast. On the other hand it must be mentioned that 

 no information whatever as to this tribe had been obtained by Graah. 



*) Meddelelser om Grønland. Vol. X. 



