348 W. Thalbitzer 



to a place occupied earlier, which may now be vacant, and rebuild 

 a house dwelt in previously. The old walls are used; as furni- 

 ture from the previous house they take with them the beams and 

 boards of the roof and platform, as also the supports for the roof, 

 the family inheritance. Thus, so far as the form and dimensions of 

 the walls are concerned, most of the houses have remained unchanged 

 from earlier, many perhaps from ancient times. Only the roof is 

 renewed each year, if the house is to be occupied in the following 

 winter; otherwise the roof is removed or falls down, when the 

 house has not been occupied for some winters. 



In the fjords round about we met with many old ruins without 

 roofs, with only the walls standing and the passage in its place. In 

 an old ruin I found at Ikaaäitiwaq, it was evident, that the original 

 plan of the house had been altered by a later extension, the front 

 and passage being moved round to the side-wall of the original 

 house and the area of the house thus doubled. Several of the ruins 

 were greatly decayed and overgrown with vegetation and appeared 

 to be very ancient. 



With regard to the number and distribution of the population 

 it may be recalled, that since the beginning of the 19th century 

 and probably even earlier constant immigration has been going on 

 round Cape Farvel to the southernmost part of West Greenland. 

 From the summary given on p. 184 it will be seen, that during the 

 period 1822 to 1884 609 East Greenlanders have been enrolled in 

 the church books at Frederiksdal, the southernmost mission station 

 on the west coast and the greater number of those baptised there, 

 though born on the east coast, may be considered to have settled 

 on the west coast. A contributory reason for leaving the east 

 coast has probably been, the increasing difficulty of existence 

 owing to the decrease in numbers of the large seals. These 

 causes have led evidently to great fluctuations in the number 

 of the population. In 1829 Graah gave the population on the 

 southern part of East Greenland (south of Ammassalik) to be 600 

 persons, in 1832 he estimated, that there were only 480 (p. 183). 

 According to Holm the whole population of East Greenland between 

 Ammassalik and Cape Farvel amounted in 1884 to 548 and of 

 these 413 lived at Ammassalik (193 men, 220 women); in 1892 there 

 were only 293 persons at Ammassalik, in 1895 even 247 only, as 

 118 had migrated southwards from there in 1891. This was coun- 

 terbalanced in 1896, when 118 came from the south and settled in 

 Ammassalik, raising the population there to 372 (161 men and 211 

 women) distributed over 14 settlements with up to 45 persons at 



