ANIMALS. 77 



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 j and 

 their superstition is as profound as their worship 

 is contemptible. Wretched and ignorant as they 

 are, yet they do not want pride ; they set them- 

 selves far above the rest of mankind ; and Crantz 

 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 j 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 

 stranger, 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 



* Ellis's Voyage, p. 256. 



