438 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
stream not yet dried up or frozen, Dr. Stuxberg discovered some 
small mounds containing burnt bones. The cremation bad been 
so complete that only one of the pieces of bone that were found 
could be determined by Dr. Almquist. It was a human tooth. 
After cremation the remains of the bones and the ash had been 
collected in an excavation, and covered first with turf and then 
with small flat stones. The encampments struck me as having 
been abandoned only a few years ago, and even the collections 
of bones did not appear to me to be old. But we ought to be 
very cautious when we endeavour in the Arctic regions to 
estimate the age of an old encampment, because in judging of 
the changes which the surface of the earth undergoes with time 
we are apt to be guided by our experience from more southerly 
r^ions. To how limited an extent this experience may be 
utilised in the high north is shown by Kink’s assertion that on 
Greenland at some of the huts of the Norwegian colonists, 
which have been deserted for centuries, footpaths can still be 
distinguished,^ an observation to which I would scarcely give 
credence, until I had myself seen something similar at the site 
of a house in the bottom of Jacobshaven ice-fjord in north¬ 
western Greenland, which had been abandoned for one or two 
centuries. Here footpaths as sharply defined as if they had been 
trampled yesterday ran from the ruin in different directions. 
It may therefore very readily happen that the encampments in 
the neighbourhood of our present anchorage were older than we 
would be inclined at first sight to suppose. No refuse heaps of 
any importance were seen here. 
This was the first time that any vessel had lain-to on this 
coast. Our arrival was therefore evidently considered by the 
natives a very remarkable occurrence, and the report of it 
appears to have spread very rapidly. For though there were 
no tents in the neighbourhood, we had many visitors. I still 
^ H. Rink, Gronland geographisk og statistisk heskrevet^ Bd. 2, Copenhagen, 
1857, p. 344. 
