As a proof of the Eskimo's scrupulous respect for the moral law which he recognises, I may remind the reader that he never touches driftwood which another has placed above high-water mark, though it would often be so easy to appropriate it without fear of detection. And when we Europeans break through this law, and help ourselves without ceremony to their stored-up driftwood—as we have often done, I am sorry to say, intentionally or otherwise—have not the Eskimos, I wonder, at least as good right to despise us as we have to look down upon them?
Fighting and brutalities of that sort, as before mentioned, are unknown among them, and murder is very rare. They hold it atrocious to kill a fellow creature; therefore war is in their eyes incomprehensible and repulsive, a thing for which their language has no word; and soldiers and officers, brought up to the trade of killing, they regard as mere buteners.
It has, indeed, as Egede says, 'occurred now and then that an extremely malicious person, out of rankling hatred, has killed another.' But when he adds that 'this they regard with the greatest coolness, neither punishing the murderer nor taking the thing to heart in any way,' I believe that he is not quite just to them. They certainly abhor the crime, and if they do not actively mix themselves up in the matter, it is because they regard it as a private affair
