Page:Archæology of the Central Eskimos.djvu/372
were completed in the summer of 1922, Freuchen should come with our motor boat from headquarters on Danish Island and run Jacob Olsen and I over to Duke of York Bay, on the north of Southampton Island, with equipment for a month's stay, and then later on bring us back to Danish Island. Time passed, however, and Freuchen did not come; the ice conditions were unusually unfavourable that summer. In the middle of August we therefore got the Eskimos to take us in a whale boat over to Kuk, in Duke of York Bay. Here we excavated from August 20th to September 6th. After an unsuccessful attempt to get away from the island we tried to continue excavating on September 14th, but then the ground was frozen. Jacob Olsen's hand was still bad after the blood poisoning he had contracted at Naujan, so that here, too, I was alone on the work of excavation.
In all, 11 house ruins were excavated as well as 76 sq.metres of a refuse heap, bringing to light about 780 specimens;[1] in addition a collection of 291 specimens was acquired through the Eskimos, mostly found at the dead settlement on the south side of the island, but some from Duke of York Bay, as for instance 68 from Kuk.[2] Professor Boas has furthermore with great kindness lent us some. drawings of non-published specimens from Capt. Comer's collections. Finally, I was given a great amount of information by three old Aivilik Eskimos regarding the mode of living and the culture of the Sadlermiut.
In the northern part of Southampton Island the great Duke of York Bay cuts in from Fox Basin and forms an oasis in this otherwise so unapproachable and unattractive coast. The east side of the bay is fairly high, rocky land, consisting of shore ridges of fragments of lime-stone, one behind the other; in a bay in the northern part of this coast debouches the rapid Thomsen River; its estuary, Kuk, has from the earliest times and up to the present day been an important centre of habitation; the bay outside abounds with walruses white whales and seals, and at one time whales, and the river and the lake from which it springs are rich in salmon. Fig. 72 is a sketch of Kuk and its immediate surroundings. At the mouth of the river, just south of it (4) is the principal settlement of the Aivilik. Eskimos who now inhabit the northern part of Southampton Island. Round about Kuk there are also three groups of house ruins besides numerous other remains of habitation.