dly needed the care of a
physician. A few of the sailors were persuaded to stay another year.
"So now," Egede wrote in his diary when, on July 31, 1731, he had
seen the ship sail away with all his hopes, "I am left alone with my
wife and three children, ten sailors and eight Eskimos, girls and
boys who have been with us from the start. God let me live to see
the blessed day that brings good news once more from home." His
prayer was heard. The next summer brought word that the mission was
to be continued, partly because Egede had strained every nerve to
send home much blubber and many skins. But it was as a glimpse of
the sun from behind dark clouds. His greatest trials trod hard upon
the good news.

To rouse interest in the mission Egede had sent home young Eskimos
from time to time. Three of these died of smallpox in Denmark. The
fourth came home and brought the contagion, all unknown, to his
people. It was the summer fishing season, when the natives travel
much and far, and wherever he went they flocked about him to hear of
the "Great Lord's land," where the houses were so tall that one
could not shoot an arrow over them, and to ask a multitude of
questions: Was the King very big? Had he caught many whales? Was he
strong and a great Angekok? and much more of the same kind. In a
week the disease broke out among the children at the mission, and
soon word came from islands and fjords where the Eskimos were
fishing, of death and misery unspeakable. It was virgin soil for the
plague, and it was terribly virulent, striking down young and old in
every tent and hut. More than two thousand natives, one-fourth of
the whole population, died that summer. Of two hundred families near
the mission only thirty were left alive. A cry of terror and anguish
rose throughout the settlements. No one knew what to do. In vain did
Egede implore them to keep their sick apart. In fever delirium they
ran out in the ice-fields or threw themselves into the sea. A wild
panic seized the survivors, and they fled to the farthest tribes,
carrying the seeds of death with them wherever they went. Whole
villages perished, and their dead lay unburied. Utter desolation
settled like a pall over the unhappy land.

Through it all a single ray of hope shone. The faith that Egede had
preached all those years, and the life he had lived with them, bore
their fruit. They had struck deeper than he thought. They crowded to
him, all that could, as their one friend.