79 
PARK AND CC/ACTCRY. 
Bay are Lutherans, having been Christianized many 
decades ago by the Danish missionaries. I found 
the Esquimaux were poor in all things except good 
nature, and were especially poor as to a suitable 
ground where to deposit their dead, there being no 
soil or vegetation in all that section. 
Our two weeks stay gave us ample opportunity 
to visit the natives in their homes, which are simply 
squalid huts, but no chance to see a funeral. How- 
ever, I visited the cemetery and found as follows: 
that as there are no trees there can be no wood, 
hence no coffins. The only wood on Greenland 
coast is either brought from Copenhagen, or caught 
from the drift. The dead are simply laid on the 
surface of the rocks wrapped in sealskin. — Hair seal 
is the main stay of the natives: skin for clothes, 
flesh for food, fat for light and heat. The body is 
then covered to the depth of perhaps ten inches 
with moss scraped from the sides of a friendly rock, 
over which are mounded stones of various sizes to 
keep the body from wild animals, and as a monu- 
ment. In the view showing a party exhuming for 
specimens, the reader will observe that the graves 
are simply stone mounds. We found in all of the 
old graves only skulls, securing five in good condi- 
tion in one mound, and no other bones. A fine 
collection was gathered, but alas, they all went 
down on the steamship “Miranda.” 
There are exceptions to the average mound. 
The Danes, who are in control of all the Greenland 
coast below Melville Bay, have a wooden enclosure 
surrounding their graves, the wood being brought 
from Denmark; and the wooden crosses are for the 
more favored or better portion of the Esquimaux. 
All else are filled with the poor, simple children of 
the frozen North, and their only monument a heap 
of stones, which in a later day is overturned by 
some explorer in search of human frames in the in- 
terest of science. 
This brief article cannot give the reader my 
thoughts fully as I contemplated this God’s Acre. 
Here are the bones of human beings, some of them, 
perhaps, descendants of kings from Southern climes 
in centuries past, and beyond the memory or his- 
tory of the living. It was noticable that the mounds 
exhumed brought to light mostly skulls, furnishing 
evidence of antiquity, probably of those who died 
before the Lutheran missionaries spread the Gospel 
of Christ on the Greenland coast. Yet the method 
of burial remains as before, even though the present 
generation are blessed with religious rites. The 
people of Greenland on the western coast below 
Melville Bay are all nominally Christians, and dis- 
pose of their dead in the same manner as at Suk- 
kertoppen. It has been frequently asked, “why do 
the Esquimaux remain in the frozen region?” The 
an-wer is plain and sini|)le. Tlicy do not know of 
the outside world, and withal, have neither the de- 
sire nor facilities to leave their bleak and desolate 
habitation. To bring such a race to a warmer cli- 
mate and to civilization would insure their entire 
extinction. The future of this side tracked race can 
only be imagined. My thought is that ere many 
decades, they will become obliterated. 
James D. Dczvcll. 
The Bedding of Honuniental Work. 
A pernicious practice exists in the finishing of 
monumental work that should be remedied, and 
we are glad to note that one of the leading ceme- 
tery organizations, recently refused permission to a 
contractor to proceed in the erection of some work 
that contained the glaring defects to be described. 
Figure i illustrates the bottom bed of a base 
that shows carelessness and neglect in finishing. 
The bottom bed is left just as the block came from 
the quarry and has never been taken out of wind, 
to level this base requires the use of various sized 
stones “chucked” under the edges, and outside of 
the question of durability, it presents an unsightly 
and flimsy appearance that destroys the whole 
beauty of the monument, and breaks the even con- 
nection which should exist between the base and 
the grade line. A 
few hours work 
when the stone was 
being prepared 
would obviate all 
this trouble, and at 
the same time im- 
part to the structure 
a finished appear- 
ance that it never 
could attain with 
the base left as 
,t:SSSssr^CSS3S2l^^:Mss'3‘. 
,t.|- ' 
pllYi'- 1 
fi iiiji 
ilil' 
shown in the upper figure of the accompanying cut. 
Figure 2 shows the bed of a granite base that 
we are all familiar with. In taking this bed out of 
wind, . the cutter merely runs* one margin draft 
along the edge, and then with drill, plug and feath- 
ers, he proceeds to concave the center. We have 
seen bases when the lead in the joint would slip 
clear through, so close was the level margin on the 
bed. These bases, especially large ones, are called 
upon to sustain immense crushing weights, and when 
the entire pressure is left to be carried by these ex- 
tremely narrowed margins, the result is a crack or 
fissure. Then again these holes in the bed make 
receptacles for water and moisture, and a close ob- 
server will note that the constant freezing and thaw- 
ing of such quantities of moisture near the edges 
will produce a disintegration and honey combing 
