78 
PARK AND CCnCTCRY 
A Greenland Cemetery. 
With Melville Bay as the objective point, I 
boarded the steamship “Miranda,” July 7th, 1894. 
After many delays caused by fog, collision with an 
iceberg, and striking a hidden reef, we anchored in 
the little harbor of Sukkertoppen, (Sugar Loaf) 
NO. I. — LOOKING SOUTH. 
Greenland, in early August; a settlement of four 
hundred Esquimaux under the Danish flag, a race 
without a history or a nationality; a people of Asia- 
tic cast, whose progenitors were probably from a 
warmer clime. 
How came this peculiar people to inhabit a fro- 
zen region can only be guessed at. The belief is 
that in ages past their ancestors were forced north 
by tribal wars, probably before the date of the Eng- 
lish Channel, and hence through some emergency 
reached the north coast of Greenland, when that 
portion of the earth’s surface was more temperate 
than now. 
As the cycles of time rolled along and the ice 
fiend claimed possession of all that is now known as 
the great snow cap, this remnant of a once more im- 
portant tribe worked its way down the coast to 
NO. 2.— OPENING GRAVES. 
Davis’ Straits where they now struggle in poverty 
for existence. While waiting for relief, a matter of 
two weeks, we took in the settlement and its sur- 
roundings. My first thought was, in case of death 
where might we be buried; but in any event I de- 
sired to see the place where the Sukkertoppeners 
buried their dead. Their method of burial is not 
as they would have it if living in a more favored 
clime, but is forced by the conditions of climate 
and surroundings. 
Disposition of the dead has been from remote 
times mostly a grave subject. The ancients had a 
way of embalming and depositing in tombs, hence 
the mummies; also cremation in a rude form was 
practiced. To-day in India some deposit their dead 
in the water, and the high caste leave their dead on 
the roof of a mausoleum or chapel, where the cor- 
morants or birds of 
prey eat the flesh 
from the corpse, 
and later the bones 
are sent down to the 
ocean. In other por- 
tions of the globe 
the dead are placed 
NO. 3.— LUTHERAN CHURCH. 
in trees or on poles. 
It remains for the poor Esquimaux of Greenland 
to show to the civilized world that the dead may be 
buried without digging a hole in the ground. In 
Greenland, cremation, or earth covering, or em- 
balming, is utterly impossible, and owing to the 
climate quite unnecessary. 
The views of the cemetery at Sukkertoppen, 
which accompany this article, were photographed 
by the writer in August, 1894. No. i represents 
the cemetery looking south towards Davis’ Straits. 
It is a plot of about five acres in a canon, the rock 
projections exhibiting deep glacial marks. No. 2 
shows the party opening graves to collect speci- 
mens for scientific purposes. No. 3 is the Lutheran 
Church. All of the Esquimaux, south of Melville 
