THE POLAR FAMILY. 55 



infidelity is a proverb among voyagers.* In gluttony, selfishness and ingratitude, 

 they are perhaps unequalled by any other nation of people ; and they are habitu- 

 ally unfeeling w^ithout designing to be cruel.f On the other hand they are mild 

 in their tempers, and tractable in their manners ; but their chief redeeming virtue 

 is their fondness for their children, w^hich knows no bounds. They are devoid 

 of warlike propensities; and even the resistance made by the Samoiedes to the yoke 

 of the Russians, has been two or three local and abortive attempts at insurrection. 

 BufFon states that Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, attempted to discipline a 

 regiment of Laplanders, but they could never be brought to action.^ Finally, 

 though grossly puerile in their superstitions, they have no combination of senti- 

 ments that deserves the name of religion. 



Most readers are aware that colonies of Scandinavians and Icelanders peopled 

 Greenland in the middle ages. Since the fourteeHth century, however, nothing 

 has been heard of them, and they were supposed to have been blocked up and 

 destroyed by the accumulating ice, whence the name of Lost Greenland. In 

 1829 the Danish government sent Captain Graah to explore these icy solitudes, 

 and to ascertain at least the locality of the lost colony. This enterprising voyager 

 discovered a community of which he gives the following account : " They have 

 little analogy with the Eskimaux, and resemble, on the contrary, the Scandinavians 

 of Europe. They have neither the flat heads, short broad persons nor flabby 

 features of the Eskimaux ; but are for the most part above the middle stature, 

 having the European form of head and expression of countenance. Their persons 

 are rather meagre, but nervous and finely formed, without any appearance of 

 weakness, and they are more active and robust than the inhabitants of the western 

 coast. The color of the skin of the women and children is quite clear and pure 

 as that of Europeans, and they have often brown hair, which is never seen in the 

 other inhabitants of Greenland."^ The moral character of these people is said to 

 be characterised by great honesty, simplicity and truth : yet they are pagans, have 

 their sorcerers like the Eskimaux, and speak probably a dialect of their language, 

 for Captain Graah could not understand it. It will be readily surmised from the 

 preceding facts, that these people constitute the real remains of the Scandinavian 



* Parry, Second Voy. p. 529. 



t They sometimes destroy children who have lost their parents, and bury ahve or otherwise 

 destroy such old persons as have by their infirmities become a burthen on the community.— 6'ee 

 Crantz, loco citat.^ and Ellis, Voy, to Hudson's Bay, p. 191. 



X SoNxiNi's Buffon, XX, p. 67. § Jour. Roy. Geog. Soc. of London, VII, p. 240. 



