558 W. THALBITZER. 
spelling of the Greenlandic names he says that “in order to bring 
them more in line with the pronunciation of the natives”: “instead of 
the letter и I have employed the letter 1, instead of о I have used e.” 
But he avows that he has refrained from going to the extremity of 
writing the East Greenlandic names just as they are pronounced, 
“for this would involve nothing less than changing practically all 
the consonants.” There is perhaps an exaggerated generalisation in 
some of Holm’s remarks on the language, yet, more or less, they bear 
witness to his ear’s sound and correct impression of the peculiarities 
of this dialect. | 
J. Hinr. RINK, who, just after Holm’s return, described the 
Ammassalik dialect on the basis of the information brought home 
by Holm’s expedition, without having heard it personally, did not 
succeed in drawing a phonetically correct picture of it. 
The correctness of my view may be disputed in details, but 
hardly so along the main lines. Whenever necessary the voice of my 
phonograph can testify to the correspondence of my interpretation 
with the objective phenomena. 
7; 
Through the medium of the language exactly reproduced, a frag- 
ment of an old Inuit literature is herewith rescued from oblivion. 
A pre-Columbian, pre-Scandinavian, exotico-hyperborean, (etc.). 
Should you ask me, whence these stories? 
Whence these legends’ and traditions, 
With their frequent repetitions, 
And their wild reverberations, 
As of thunder in the mountains? 
In 1883, at the 5th International Congress of Americanists (in 
Copenhagen), D. G. Brinton spoke on the aboriginal American literature 
and said: 
“This class of works has an interest, apart from their subjects, which 
calls for special consideration. This interest is that they illustrate the in- 
tellectural powers of the red race, their literary faculties, in short, their 
racial psychology. Here, better than elsewhere, we can apply a common 
measure to the powers of the mind, and frame a more accurate comparison 
between the imagination, the logical grasp, the poetic instinct, the dramatic 
insight of the natives of the new world ...... pi 
У"е Congrès International des Américanistes a Copenhague, 1883 
(Compte-rendu 1884, p. 54.) 
With the technical assistance and personal training of modern 
times at our disposal, we have drawn closer to our aim of under- 
standing the soul of this foreign race and making a direct comparison 
