147 



rature is outside -^15 to ч- 30° С. Inside the house both 

 grown-up people and children wear as a rule so to speak 

 DOthing, and it does not inconvenience them to walk out into 

 the cold in the same light dress — only increased by a pair 

 of leather boots ; thus 1 remember once to have seen two quite 

 young girls walking almost naked on the beach at about 

 15 minutes' walk from the house, gathering sea-weed, though 

 the temperature was about 4-15° С 



That the East- Greenlanders on the whole are such a sound 

 and strong race, and that individuals of a delicate health are 

 so rarely found among them, is mainly due to the selection of 

 the nature, the delicate individuals most often perishing during 

 the first years of life ; the art does nothing here as in civilized 

 countries to keep them alive; on the contrary it is not rare at 

 all that children thought at their birth to be less capable of 

 living, are immediately drowned by their parents or housemates. 

 All the same, illness is no rare guest, and the East-Greenlan- 

 ders are very anxious about all that may be called internal 

 illness in contradistinction from their strongly marked hardiness 

 towards toils and outward injures. 



As has been told, many children perish during the first 

 years of life, because nothing is done, and perhaps nothing can 

 be done to preserve the delicate. The disturbances of digestion 

 of infants, so general and often dangerous with us, yet seem to 

 be rather rare which finds its natural explanation in the fact 

 that every mother of course suckles her child. If it happens 

 that the mother dies in childbed, or while the child is still an 

 infant it must die, if no other woman can overtake the suckling. 

 No other domestic animals than dogs being kept, milk is not 

 known, and artificial nourishment therefore so to speak an im- 

 possibility. The suckling is as a rule continued for a long time, 

 often even till the third or fourth year of life, but then certainly 

 in connection with other food. It is besides rather astonishing 

 what is offered to the stomach of such a little Greenlander. 



10* 



