utterance of Egede's, of which I have already spoken: 'The inborn stupidity and dulness of the Greenlanders, their slothful and brutish up-bringing, their wandering and unstable way of life, certainly offer great hindrances to their conversion, and ought as much as possible to be obviated and remedied.' What a lack of comprehension! Only think, to want to obviate and remedy the nomadic life of a tribe of hunters! What would remain to them? I may add that he at another time proposes to attain this end by means of 'chastisement and discipline.'
The Eskimos at first listened in astonishment to the strangers. They had hitherto been very well content with themselves and their whole way of living; they did not know that man and his life on earth were so miserable as the missionaries again and again assured them they were. They had not, as Egede says, 'any just realisation of their own profound corruption,' and had great difficulty in understanding a religion so cruel as to condemn people to everlasting fire. They could quite well recognise 'original sin' as a common characteristic of the kavdlunaks (Europeans), for it was clear enough that many of them were bad; but the kaladlit (Eskimos) were good people, and ought without any trouble to get into heaven.
When in 1728 a number of Danish men and
