e as many wives as he saw
fit; they were his, and it was nobody's business. But adultery was
unknown. The seventh commandment in Egede's translation came to
read, "One wife alone you shall have and love." The birth of a girl
was greeted with wailing. When grown, she was often wooed by
violence. If she fled from her admirer, he cut her feet when he
overtook her, so that she could run no more. The old women were
denounced as witches who drove the seals away, and were murdered. An
Eskimo who was going on a reindeer hunt, and found his aged mother a
burden, took her away and laid her in an open grave. Returning on
the third day, he heard her groaning yet, and smothered her with a
big stone. He tried to justify himself to Egede by saying that "she
died hard, and it was a pity not to speed her." Yet they buried a
dog's head with a child, so that the dog, being clever, could run
ahead and guide the little one's steps to heaven.

They could count no further than five; at a stretch they might get
to twenty, on their fingers and toes, but there they stopped.
However, they were not without resources. It was the day of long
Sunday services, and the Eskimos were a restless people. When the
sermon dragged, they would go up to Egede and make him measure on
their arms how much longer the talk was going to be. Then they
tramped back to their seats and sat listening with great attention,
all the time moving one hand down the arm, checking off the
preacher's progress. If they got to the finger-tips before he
stopped, they would shake their heads sourly and go back for a
remeasurement. No wonder Egede put his chief hope in the children,
whom he gathered about him in flocks.

For all that, the natives loved him. There came a day that brought
this message from the North: "Say to the speaker to come to us to
live, for the other strangers who come here can only talk to us of
blubber, blubber, blubber, and we also would hear of the great
Creator." Egede went as far as he could, but was compelled by ice
and storms to turn back after weeks of incredible hardships. The
disappointment was the more severe to him because he had never quite
given up his hope of finding remnants of the ancient Norse
settlements. The fact that the old records spoke of a West Bygd
(settlement) and an East Bygd had misled many into believing that
the desolate east coast had once been colonized. Not until our own
day was this shown to be an error, when Danish explorers