400 



POLAR REGIONS. 



children are little more dark than a brunette. In height the Greenlanders seldom exceed 5 

 feet ; they have flat faces with high cheek bones, and very full cheeks. From their manner 

 of life, they are much inclined to fat. Their eyes are small and black, but with little lustre ; 

 and their hair is long and black. They have little beard, which they carefully eradicate. A 

 hfe of alternate plenty and want in a severe climate is so httle favorable to longevity, that few 

 males live to above 50 years of age ; females, who endure less hardship, sometimes attain to 

 80 years. 



4. Dress. In a climate hke that of Greenland, the main end of dress is defence from the 

 cold, and when this is attained, it is not usual here lo be solicitous for neatness or display. 

 Perhaps the reverse of neatness is never carried so far as in a Greeulander's person and dress, as 

 the skins in which he is clothed literally drip with fat. Hans Egede says of them, that "deli- 

 cate noses do not find their account among them ; " and he further affirms, that " the olfactory 

 sensation strikes one not accustomed to it, to the very heart." It is nol here, that one would 

 feel the wish of Catullus, to be all nose. 



The materials for dress are generally skins, though a few natives wear some articles of Eu- 

 ropean woolen. The outward garment is a loose frock, with a hood like the cowl of a monk ; 

 this and the breeches are of seal or reindeer skins. The shirt is sometimes made of the skins 

 of fowls with the feathers inward. Some people, however, wear coarse European linen. The 

 dress of females is little different from that of the males ; though mothers have a frock so ca- 

 pacious, that they can carry a child at the back stowed between the body and the coat. 



5. Dwellings. The houses are not, as has been sometimes stated, subterranean, but they 

 are always placed on a little eminence, that the water may be conducted away. They are near 

 to the sea, the element to which the Grecnlander looks for all his j-esources. They are so low 

 that the inhabitants can barely stand in them upright. They are generally built by the women, 

 of large blocks of stone, in which the interstices are filled with mud and turf. They are 

 formed in a line like barracks, and one of them contains from 2 to 10 families, of whom, how- 

 ever, each has a separate apartment, opening from a common entry, that runs in front of all the 

 rooms. There are no chimneys, as the only fire used is that of lamps, and this is so consid- 

 erable that the apartments are warm. The entrance is under an arched or covered way of 20 

 feet, so low thai, to enter it, it is necessary almost to creep. In summer these huts are deserted 

 for tents made of seal-skins stretched upon a post of whalebone or wood, and made fast to the 

 ground by large stones. 



6. Food. Fish, wliich form the wealth of all the northern shores, are in great abundance 

 about Greenland. The ordinary food of the inhabitants is the Greenland salmon, a small and 

 dehcate fish, seldom more than a foot in length, but so abundant that in the bays it darkens the 

 waters. The flesh of the seal is more esteemed but less used, for all do not excel in seal- 

 catching, and the flesh of the reindeer is still more rare. Though these supplies may be con- 

 sidered abundant, yet there are circumstances that sometimes interrupt them ; and at these 

 times, many of the inhabitants die by famine. Even when some have abundance, others are 

 sutFering from want, for few savages provide for the sick and aged. 



The flesh is sometimes eaten raw, but the fish is always cooked in a large stone vessel, sus- 

 pended over the lamp. The lamps, which are open, are devised for this purpose, and have 

 sometimes a wick running round the whole circumference. They are fed from a piece of 

 blubber suspended over it, from which there is a constant dripping. There are no set times 

 for eating, but each one eats when he is hungry ; and this brings a more frequent recurrence of 

 eating than is common in Europe. This abundance of oily animal food, gives the Greenland- 

 ers a great degree of obesity, and renders them so plethoric, that they often bleed at the nose. 

 The children being unable to support as well as adults this manner of life, are not weaned till 

 they are 3 or 4 years of age, though motherless infants are destroyed. 



Unlike most savages, the Greenlanders are not fond of tobacco, v. hich in its various forms is 

 so much used in Iceland. Having no production from which they can make an intoxicating 

 liquor, they have escaped one great scourge of an uncultivated people. In other climates, few 

 nations are so rude as to have no knowledge of producing the means of intoxication, but in 

 Greenland, the earth that denies food, denies also the materials for distillation. The inhabitants 

 formerly would uot taste ardent spirits ; but of late, those in the vicinity of factories have con- 

 tracted a taste for what they used well to call the " waters of madness." 



7. Manners., Customs, &c. In the manners of savage life, there is little to interest us ; a 

 description of them is generallv but a picture of violence, ignovanre, superstition, and cruelty. 



