Page:A Wild-Goose Chase - Balmer - 1915.djvu/207

Rh the lost people of Greenland built on the hills behind Julianehaab!"

"Exactly," Koehler said. "I wanted to know if you'd see it. It's been commented on before."

"About this house?"

"As far as I know no one's ever seen this house before. Of course, I mean white people, modern white people. But there are other single, lonely stone houses like this in other places in the North. Amundsen saw one; Stefansson passed one south of here; others have reported them. They all agree that these aren't Eskimo houses; and the Eskimos who see them say the same. And, more than that, you can't get an Eskimo to go near them.

"The Eskimos call these the stone houses of the spirits and say that powerful spirits, the tunrak, built them before human beings came."

Geoff stooped and broke with his hand through the drift in the doorway. He felt down through the snow to the ground and found some objects there. He wrenched something free and brought it up. It was a stone and he dropped it and felt under the snow