1 64 Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
Severin as early as 1734 and named Christianshaab. 
Paul Egede was the first missionary there 1 . Claushavn 
was established further north in 1752. The shores and 
islands of Disco Bay were, at that time, the most populous 
part of Greenland. Another station was founded there 
in 1741, which was named Jacobshavn in memory of the 
Director of trade, Jacob Severin. In the south entrance 
of the Waigat the station of Rittenbenk was founded in 
1755, and at the other end that of Noursoak in 1758. 
In those days nothing was known further north, but 
these 12 stations had factors, and were annually visited 
by ships to receive the year's collection of blubber and 
skins. Some 20 years later, in 1774, the station of 
Julianshaab was founded in the far south. 
Danish Greenland has since continued on much the 
same lines. The Royal Trade Monopoly was established 
by a statute in 1774, and the system of collecting the 
products along the coast commenced. There are 176 
inhabited places scattered over 1000 miles of coast, and 
60 trading stations where the products are collected 
and sent to the chief stations. Besides the yield of the 
cryolite mine these products consist of oil, the skins of 
seal, reindeer, fox and bear, eider-down, feathers, whale- 
bone, narwhal horns, walrus tusks, and dried cod ; the 
net revenue being about £6600 a year, not including the 
cryolite royalty. 
The Danish Mission is also a government institution, 
there being eight missionaries with small salaries, besides 
catechists, not counting the Moravian missionaries with 
four stations. 
1 Paul Egede was afterwards a Professor at Copenhagen, and Provost 
of the Royal Danish Mission. 
