ch. xxx] The East Coast of Greenland 281 
It is very improbable that this small family of Eskimos 
had worked their way northwards over the immense 
distance from the settlements near Cape Farewell. The 
alternative is that they were descendants of the emigrants 
who found their way to the upper reaches of Sir Thomas 
Smith's Channel many centuries ago. One branch went 
south bringing with it the tradition of the uminmak or 
musk ox ; the other, still following the uminmak, reached 
the east coast, and slowly took a long road to extinction. 
Nearly fifty years passed away between Clavering's voyage 
and the next visit to this part of the east coast, and in 
the interval the dwellers in Gael Hamke Bay had become 
extinct, leaving many vestiges. 
On August 20th Captain Sabine's tents and instruments 
were embarked; the Griper was in sight of Scoresby's 
discoveries further south until the 13th September, when 
there was a gale which drifted her to the southward 
amongst heavy floes and loose ice. They lost three ice 
anchors and the kedge, but Clavering bored his way 
through the ice into the open sea, where he encountered 
a series of heavy gales, making the coast of Norway 
on the 23rd. Pendulum observations were taken at 
Trondhjem, and the Griper reached Deptford on the 
19th of December, 1823 1 . 
The next attempt to explore the east coast of Greenland 
was from the extreme south. Captain Graah of the 
Danish navy organised an expedition in March, 1829, at 
Nenortalik, the nearest settlement to Cape Farewell on 
the west side 2 . It consisted of four native boats, two 
being kayaks and two the larger women's boats. On 
reaching the east side the masses of ice piled on the beach 
rendered their progress very slow. Graah went on with 
one boat, sending the rest back on June 23rd, and by 
the 28th he had advanced as far north as 65 0 18' N. 
where he was stopped by an insurmountable barrier of 
ice. He went back to a place called Nugarlik in 63 0 22' N., 
where he wintered. On this coast between 6o° and 65 0 N. 
1 Clavering's fate was a sad one. He sailed in command of the 
Redwing from Sierra Leone in the summer of 1827, and was never heard 
of again, though some wreckage was found on the coast. 
2 There had been two early attempts to explore the east coast before 
Graah's expedition. In 1752 Walloe got as far as 60° 28', and Giesecke, 
a German, got to 6o° 9' in 1806. 
