414 PROF. NORDENSKIOLD, EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 



ment. At the largest site a tolerably thick circular stone wall, 

 8 or 10 feet high, and 26 in section, was still distinguishable, 

 divided into two unequal portions by a party-wall. The entrance 

 seems to have led into the larger of these areas, judging from 

 the extensive kitchenmidden just outside it. 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 kitchenmidden outside the large cot rested on a low slab 

 of gneiss, separated from it by a thin layer of turf, in which were 

 no trace 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 formerly the in- 

 habitants were not obliged to have recourse to this species of 

 famine-food. 



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 tarandus. Phoca Groenlandica, 

 Ursus maritimus. „ hispida. 



Tricheehus rosmarus. „ vitulina. 



Cystophora cristata. Delphinapterus leucas. 

 Phoca barbata. 



Even if we suppose that this spot was first inhabited shortly 

 after the Esquimaux entered Greenland by Smith's Sound, its 

 age will still be scarcely more than 500 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 kitchen- 

 middens of Kaja contain any other forms of animals than those 

 still living on the coast of Greenland. Nevertheless we obtain 

 here an interesting confirmation of the changes that the ice-fjord 

 has undergone. The Walrus, Phoca barbata, and Cystophora cris- 

 tata no longer venture 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 consequently an evidence that 

 the fjord at Jakobshavn was less filled with ice than now. The 

 uniform agreement of the older maps in placing here a strait, 



