37 



skreechings: we hearing them, thought it had bene the houling 

 of wolues" *). — If it is permissible to draw any conckision ' 

 from Claudius Clavus's Careli, and if this name has not 

 simply been transferred to Greenland from the Careli of Fin- 

 land, one cannot but wonder at the strong resemblance between 

 this name and Egede's kara-leq; r no doubt stands for a point 

 r, so that the word in reality almost coincides with the other 

 existing form kala-leq. Where has Clavus, who seems to have 

 been so unusually well informed in matters of Greenlandic 

 geography, got this form of the name? Is it possible that 

 already at that time the Eskimo kara-leq was known in the 

 northern countries alongside of the Icelandic-Norwegian sk ræ- 

 ling or skreling? If so, the uncertainty of the origin of 

 the name would only be increased, and there would be one 

 more reason for supposing that it is originally an Eskimo word 

 which has been adopted by the Scandinavians and by false 

 etymology changed to skræling. Yet the phonetical characteris- 

 tics of the two languages make this hypothesis too seem rather 

 uncertain. If, however, this word has been adopted in the 

 Eskimo language from the Icelandic, it must have lost its 

 initial s early. 



We may no doubt take for granted that communication 

 between the various Eskimo tribes was greater, perhaps 

 far greater, in earlier times than at present**). The accounts of 



Hakluyt Voyages 111, p. 134, cf. Frobisher's second voyage 1577, ib. p. 101. 

 it is suggestive to read in С ranz about how the Labrador Eskimo, 

 when the missionaries for the first time mentioned the Greenianders 

 and said that they came from the Karulits, immediately seemed to 

 know this name and shouted: "the Karalit up north there are 

 evil people". This idea that the Karalit were a people who lived in the 

 north, leads us to a surmise as to whether thi.s name could have come 

 to the Labrador Eskimo from the north, through communication north of 

 the Strait. D. Cranz: Der Gronlimdischen Historie (1770) HI, pp. 21)8 11". 



