THE WHITE WORLD 



thereof ; for bargaining- had to be carried on by signs not 

 always rightly interpreted. Such a babel of tongues as 

 arose, such shouts of laughter, had probably never before 

 been heard in Sukkertoppen. 



Ribbons appeared to make the most popular appeal to 

 the Eskimo women, and they went like hot cakes. A man 

 with a sufficient supply of ribbons could soon have owned 

 the town. All the women wore ribbons in their hair, 

 which was tied up in a top-knot. These ribbons were 

 worn not only for ornament, but also to designate the lady's 

 condition. Maids wore red, married women blue, widows 

 black, and those who were neither maid, wife nor widow, 

 green. Some of the widows wore black and red ribbons 

 interlaced, a sort of quick or the dead colors, which indi- 

 cated a willingness to marry again. 



It chanced that a young theological student had brought 

 with him a great roll of green ribbon, and when he saw 

 how popular ribbons were, he produced his roll and un- 

 wound it before a lot of maidens and their mothers. The 

 hilarity that he occasioned embarrassed him, and when he 

 attempted to hand his ribbons for examination to any of 

 the girls the manner in which they ran laughing from 

 him filled him with astonishment and embarrassed him all 

 the more. When an ethnologist of the expedition, learned 

 in Eskimo lore, explained to him the significance of the 

 wearing of the green, he immediately retired in confusion 

 to the Miranda, where he could blush unseen. 



Of all the members of the expedition none gave the 

 natives such amusement as did our English representa- 

 tive. Clad in a yellow oil-skin suit, and with his eye-glass 

 in his ocular,, he solemnly paraded about the settlement 

 ogling the girls with a stony British stare. His absolute 

 lack of any sense of humor, or of the incongruity of his 

 make up, rendered his appearance all the more comical. 



He was with a party of us who visited a glacier up one 

 of the fiords, about thirty miles away. When we arrived 

 at the foot of the glacier, we were quite worn with our 

 exertions. There was a bright sun and the day was warm 

 for Greenland. When we disembarked, the Englishman 

 declared he must have a bath, and disrobing, jumped 

 into the shallow water. Its icy coldness caused him to 



