384 



THE POLAR WORLD. 



Scandinavian myth. But while no one else cared about its existence, the ardent 

 Hans Egede (born in Norway, January 31, 1686), pastor of Vaage, in the Lofo- 

 ten Islands, still continued to cherish its memory. He had read in the ancient 

 chronicles about the old Christian communities in Greenland, and could not be- 

 lieve in their total extinction. He felt the deepest concern in the fate of their 

 descendants, and the thought that after so long a separation from the mother- 

 country they must needs be plunged in barbarism and heathen darkness, left 

 him no rest by night or day. At length he resolved to devote his life to their 

 spiritual welfare, and to become the apostle of rediscovered or regenerated 

 Greenland. His zeal and perseverance overcame a thousand difficulties. Nei- 

 ther the pubHc ridicule, nor the coldness of the authorities to whom he vainly 

 applied for assistance, nor the exhortations of his friends, could damp his ardor. 

 At length, after years of fruitless endeavors, after having given up his living 

 and sacrificed his little fortune in the prosecution of his plans, he succeeded in 

 forming a Greenland Company, with a capital of 9000 dollars, and in obtaining an 

 annual stipend from the Danish Missionary Fund of 300 dollars, to which King 

 Frederic IV. added a gift of 200 dollars. With three ships, the largest of 

 which " The Hope," had forty colonists on board, Egede, accompanied by his 

 wife and four children, set sail from the port of Bergen on May 12, 1721, and 

 reached Greenland on July 3, after a long and tedious passage. The winds had 

 driven him to the western coast, in latitude 64°, and here he resolved at once 

 to begin his evangelical labors with the Esquimaux. A wooden chapel was 

 speedily erected, which formed the first nucleus of the still existing settlement 

 of Godthaab. 



But if the life of worthy Egede had for many a year been full of trouble be- 

 fore he went to Greenland, trials still more severe awaited him during his apos- 

 tolical career. He had not merely the suspicions of the Esquimaux, the enmity 

 of their medicine-men, the severity of the climate, and not seldom even famine 

 to contend with. His own countrymen, disappointed in their hopes of carrying 

 on a lucrative trade with the Greenlanders, resolved to abandon it altogether, 

 and, after ten laborious years, the Government not only withdrew all further as- 

 sistance from the mission, but even ordered the colony to be broken up. All 

 his companions, with the exception of a few volunteers who engaged to share 

 his fortunes, now returned to Denmark ; but Egede, though his health had been 

 so shattered by almost superhuman exertions that he had long since been obliged 

 to leave all active duties to his son, resolved, like a faithful soldier, to die at his 

 post. In 1*733 his perseverance was at length rewarded by the grateful news 

 that the king, at the entreaty of Count Zinzendorf, the founder of Herrenhuth, 

 had consented to bestow an annual grant of 2000 dollars on the Greenland mis- 

 sion, and that three Moravian brothers had arrived to assist him in his work. 

 Thus he could at length (1735) return with a quiet heart to his native country, 

 where he died, universally regretted, in 1758, at the age of seventy-two. 



It may easily be supposed that, during his long stay in Greenland, he anx- 

 iously sought the traces of his lost countrymen, for the desire to help them had 

 first led him to that Arctic country. Nothing in the physiognomy of the Es- 

 quimaux or in their language pointed in any way to a European origin, and 



