44 A SUMMER IN GREENLAND 
blubber-lamp, though there is now generally a 
stove. Along one wall of the room runs a raised 
wooden platform on which the members of the 
family sleep together. Glass panes in wooden 
frames have now replaced the sheets of semi- 
transparent intestine which used to serve for the 
admission of light. Outside is a mound of partially 
grass-covered rubbish, the accumulation of many 
years of refuse. From the rubbish heaps (kitchen 
middens) of older Settlements many valuable 
records of an earlier culture have been disinterred. 
With a few exceptions Settlements have no roads: 
smooth and slippery hummocks of rock, at least 
in the districts where gneiss is the dominant rock, 
or tussocks of grass and patches of bog have to be 
traversed with circumspection, and unless the 
native soft-soled boots are worn it is difficult to 
avoid falls and wet feet. Pieces of seal flesh and 
fish are often hung out of reach of the dogs across 
strips of wood fastened to long upright poles; bones 
of whales and other animals litter the beach, and 
dark-red pools lie in depressions on the rocks 
where the women have cut up recently captured 
seals. On Manitsok Island, a few miles from 
Egedesminde, which we visited as guests of Miss 
Svensgaard, the lady-doctor in charge of the 
District, is one of the smallest Settlements we saw. 
A few stone houses, each with its long tunnel- 
entrance, have been built on a depression between 
two ice-smoothed hills of gneiss close to the edge 
of the sea. In front of the houses strips of fish 
were hung out to dry on cross-bars resting on tall 
