THE ESQUIMAUX EDEN. 
277 
along it were rejoicing in the young summer, and 
when we halted it was upon some green-clothed cape 
near a stream of water from the ice-fields above. Our 
sportsmen would clamber up the cliffs and come back 
laden with little auks; great generous fires of turf, that 
cost nothing but the toil of gathering, blazed merrily; 
and our happy oarsmen, after a long day’s work, made 
easy by the promise ahead, would stretch themselves 
in the sunshine and dream happily away till called to 
the morning wash and prayers. We enjoyed it the 
more, for we all of us knew that it could not last. 
This coast must have been a favorite region at one 
time with the natives,— a sort of Esquimaux Eden. 
We seldom encamped without finding the ruins of their 
habitations, for the most part overgrown with lichens, 
and exhibiting every mark of antiquity. One of these, 
in latitude 70° 20', was once, no doubt, an extensive 
village. Cairns for the safe deposit of meat stood in 
long lines, six or eight in a group; and the huts, built 
of large rocks, faced each other, as if disposed on a 
street or avenue. 
The same reasoning which deduces the subsidence 
of the coast from the actual base of the Temple of 
Serapis, proves that the depression of the Greenland 
coast, which I had detected as far north as Upernavik, 
is also going on up here. Some of these huts were 
washed by the sea or torn away by the ice that had 
descended with the tides. The turf, too, a representa¬ 
tive of very ancient growth, was cut off even with the 
water’s edge, giving sections two feet thick. I had not 
