a great angekok? And had he caught many whales?' Paul Egede records that when they thought his father's sermons too long 'they went up to him and asked him if he was not soon going to stop. Then he had to measure off upon his arm how much of his discourse was left, whereupon they went back to their places and sat moving their hands down their arms every moment. When the preacher paused at the end of a paragraph, they made haste to move the hand right out to the finger-tips; but when he began again they cried "Ama" (that is, "Still more") and moved the hand back again half way up the arm. The singing was in my department, and when I began a new psalm, or sang for too long, they would often hold a wet sealskin mitten over my mouth.'
The missionaries' treatment of the natives was not always of the gentlest. I may cite a couple of examples chosen at random from their own statements: 'I gave him to understand,' says Niels Egede, 'that if he would not let himself be persuaded by fair means, but despised the Word of God, he should receive the same treatment from me as other angekoks and liars had received (namely a thrashing).' 'When I had tried all I could by means of persuasion and exhortation, without avail, I had recourse to my usual method, flogged him soundly and turned him out of
