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time supplied the national sports and entertainments. The so
called nith-songs were used for settling all sorts of crimes or
breaches of public order or custom, with the exception of those
which could only be expiated by death.
While, as before stated, a MARKED PROGRESS is evidently
observed in passing from the Western to the Eastern tribes, as
regards the kayak with its implements and the dexterity in
using them, THE CONTRARY MAY BE SAID SO FAR AS CONCERNS
SOCIAL ORGANISATION, a natural consequence of the dispersal
which renders the preservation of social customs and usages
more and more difficult, in some cases even impossible. Our
imperfect knowledge only permits us to illustrate the social
order of the different tribes by examples of which a few shall
be given here.
We begin with THE EXTREME EAST, the district of
Angmagsalik on the Greenland coast opposite Iceland. The Danish
expedition who wintered here in 1884 —1885 had the opportunity
of most minutely studying the usages and customs, the
language and traditions of the natives who had lived here debarred
from a contact with Europeans which might influence their way
of life. Their society exhibited most decidedly the character of
a «tribe» on a small scale and the researches mentioned have
made it one of the best known, if not the very best known of all
the Eskimo tribes that have existed unaltered by contact with
civilisation. They numbered 413 souls, divided into eleven smaller
communities inhabiting so many wintering stations; the widest
distance between them being 80 miles. A remarkable feature
of this distribution (as a rule probably observed nowhere else)
was that each place had but one house. Consequently no
difference between housefellows and placefellows could exist. The
number of inmates of a house in one instance was as high as
58. The house of the station where the Danish explorers had
erected their own hut was inhabited by 38 persons constituting
8 families. The ledge running along the backwall of the room
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