126 
THE ANGEKOKS. 
clamber up a rocky gorge to escape his wrath, leaving 
the chosen one behind him. The report—for scandal is 
not frozen out of Greenland—makes the lady a willing 
eloper, and more courageous than her runaway lover. 
The mysteries of the angekok, still so marked in 
their influence farther to the north, are not openly 
recognised near the Danish settlements. The last 
regular professor of them, Kenguit, was baptized at 
Proven in 1844, changing his name to Jonathan Jere- 
mias. But as you recede from the missionary influence 
the dark art is still practised in all its power. 
A fact of psychological interest, as it shows that 
civilized or savage wonder-workers form a single family, 
is that the angekoks believe firmly in their own powers. 
I have known several of them personally, after my 
skill in pow-wow had given me a sort of correlative 
rank among them, and can speak with confidence on 
this point. I could not detect them in any resort to 
jugglery or natural magic: their deceptions are simply 
vocal, a change of voice, and perhaps a limited profes¬ 
sion of ventriloquism, made more imposing by the dark¬ 
ness. They have, however, like the members of the 
learned professions everywhere else, a certain language 
or jargon of their own, in which they communicate 
with each other. Lieutenant-Governor Steffenson, who 
had charge of the Northern District up to 1829, and 
was an admirable student of every thing that regards 
these people, says that their artificial language is no- 
, thing but the ordinary dialect of the country, modified 
in the pronunciation, with some change in the import 
