ANIMALS. 241 



game which they have overtaken. Upon these skates they descend 

 the steepest mountains, and scale the most craggy precipices ; and in 

 these exercises the women are not less skillful than the men. The) 

 have all the use of the bow and arrow, which seems to be a contri- 

 vance common to all barbarous nations ; and which, however, at fiist 

 required no small skill to invent. They launch a javelin also, .with 

 great force, and some say that they can hit a mark no larger than 

 a crown, at thirty yards distance, and with such force as would pierce 

 a man through. They are all hunters, and particularly pursue the 

 ermine, the fox, the ounce, and the martin, for the sake of their skins. 

 These they barter with their southern neighbours for brandy and to- 

 bacco ; both which they are fond of to excess. Their food is prin- 

 cipally dried fish, the flesh of rein-deer and bears. Their bread i* 

 composed of the bones of fishes, pounded and mixed with the inside 

 tender bark of the pine-tree. Their drink is train-oil, or brandy ; 

 and when deprived of these, water in which juniper berries have been 

 infused. With regard to their morals, they have all the virtues of 

 simplicity, and all the vices of ignorance. They offer their wives and 

 daughters to strangers, and seem to think it a particular honour if 

 their offer be accepted. They have no idea of religion, or a Supreme 

 Being ; the greatest number of them are idolaters ; and their super- 

 stition is as profound as their worship is contemptible. Wretched and 

 ignorant as they are, yet they do not want pride ; they set themselves 

 far above the rest of mankind ; and Krantz assures us, that when the 

 Greenlanders are got together, nothing is so customary among them 

 as to turn the Europeans into ridicule. They are obliged, indeed, to 

 yield them the pre-eminence in understanding and mechanic arts ; but 

 they do not know how to set any value upon these. They therefore 

 count themselves the only civilized and well-bred people in the world ; 

 and it is common with them, when they see a quiet, or a modest stran- 

 ger, to say that he is almost as well-bred as a Greenlander. 



From this description, therefore, this whole race of people may be 

 considered as distinct from any other. Their long continuance in a 

 climate the most inhospitable, their being obliged to subsist on food 

 the most coarse and ill prepared, the savageness of their manners, and 

 their laborious lives, all have contributed to shorten their stature, and 

 to deform their bodies.* In proportion as we approach towards the 

 north pole, the size of the natives appears to diminish, growing less 

 and less as we advance higher, till we come to those latitudes that aie 

 destitute of all inhabitants whatsoever. 



The wretched natives of these climates seem fitted by Nature to 

 endure the rigours of their situation. As their food is but scanty and 

 precarious, their patience in hunger is amazing.t A man who has 

 eaten nothing for four days, can manage his little canoe in the most 

 furious waves, and calmly subsist in the midst of a tempest that would 

 quickly dash an Eurvpjean boat to pieces. Their strength is net less 

 amazing than their patience ; a woman among them will carry a piece 

 of timber, or a stone, near double the weight of what an European 

 can lift. Their bodies are of a dark gray all over ; and their faces 



* Ellis's Voyage, p. 256. f Krantz, p. 134 voL .. 



VOL. I. Q 



