FUTURE REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.

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In an eclipse of the moon, the Greenlanders are alarmed, and beat upon kettles and make other noises to Anninga, to make him return to his place.

When it thundered, they said two women were flapping a dried seal-skin, and that produced the noise. These fictions were not believed by the more sensible among them.

Their notion of heaven, or elysium, was curious. Many of them placed their elysium in the abysses of the ocean, and thought the deep cavities of the rocks were the avenues leading to it. There dwelt Torngarsuk and his mother; there summer was perpetual, and a shining sun was obscured by no night. There were streams of limpid water; and fowls, fishes, reindeer, and seals were all taken without toil.

But to these seats none could approach but those who had been dexterous and diligent in their work. Activity and industry are the great virtues of Greenlanders. Those who had achieved great exploits, who had mastered many whales and seals, who had suffered great hardships, and had been drowned in the sea, were admitted to this happy place.

Others, more charmed with the beauty of the celestial bodies than with the ocean, placed their heaven beyond the rainbow, and imagined that departed souls danced and played at ball in the mansions of the moon; and they considered the northern lights as the dance of sportive souls. Their tents surrounded a beautiful lake, which overflowed wher it rained upon earth.

The place of punishment for the wicked, that is the lazy, and all witches especially, was a grea empty receptacle, which whirled about incessantly.

so as to allow of no rest to suffering souls. There were famine, weariness, and want, and there" hope never came, which comes to all."

After the interment of the dead, those who attended the funeral procession betook themselves to the house of mourning. At first the men sat awhile silent, with their elbows on their knees, and their heads between their hands; but the women lay prostrate upon the ground, and softly sobbed and wept.

At length the father, or son, or nearest male relation commenced a funeral discourse, in which the good qualities of the dead were recited; and at every pause of the speaker, the mourners broke out into loud lamentations. A discourse of this sort is recorded by the missionary historian of Greenland. It was the lamentation of a father for his son.

"Wo is me that I see thy wonted seat, but it is empty! Vain are thy mother's toils of love to dry thy garments. Lo! my joy is gone into darkness; it is crept into the caverns of the mountains!

"Once, when the even came, I went out, and was glad I stretched my eager eye, and waited thy return. Behold, thou camest! thou camest manfully rowing on, vying with the young and old. Never didst thou return empty from the sea; thy kajak brought its never-failing load of seals and sea-fowl.

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Thy mother, she kindled the fire, and dressed what thy hand had acquired. Thy mother, she spread thy booty before many invited guests, and I took my portion among them.

LAMENTATION FOR THE DEAD.

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"Thou espiedst the shallop's scarlet-streamer from afar, and joyfully shoutedst, Behold, Lars cometh! Thou skippedst over the strand with haste; and thy hand took hold of the gunwale of the shallop. Then were thy seals produced, and thy mother separated the blubber; for this thou receivedst garments of linen and iron barbs for thy spear.

"But now, alas, it is over! When I think on thee, my heart is melted within me. If I could weep like others I might relieve my pain. What can I wish upon earth. Death only is desirable to me. But then who would provide for my wife and the rest of my tender children? For their sakes, then, I will live yet a little while."

When the lamentation for the dead ceased, the mourners partook of a feast, and then returned to their several homes. The memory of the dead was cherished by them with peculiar tenderness.

The appearance of the shallop, and the exclamation of the youth, "Behold, Lars cometh," signified the appearance of a trading-ship, Danish or Dutch, and Lars was the merchant who brought iron and European garments, exchanging them with the young Greenlander for seal-skins and blubber. The elegy was composed after the trade with Europeans commenced.

The Greenlanders had properly no science. They had, like other savages, no notion of letters. When they heard the Europeans read aloud, they thought the book had a voice, and that the reader repeated what he heard it utter. When they first saw writing, they were afraid to touch it, calling a letter "the speaking paper."

They could only count five. They learned upon their hands, by counting the fingers and thumb. The four fives, included in fingers and toes, they called a man, because those twenty members belong to a man; and a number including three twenties, or more, they would call three men, &c. They could not count more time than twenty years; but they could imagine many terms of twenty winters, for so they calculated their year.

They were also very ignorant of medicine; but they could set fractured bones and heal wounds with great success. Their health was good, notwithstanding the severity of their climate and the hardships of their lives.

CHAPTER XI.

THE arrival of the Spaniards in Southern America was the signal of extermination to a happy and almost innocent race of beings, solely because justice and true religion never entered into the policy of the conquerors. Some among them intended to do right, but their prevailing system was one of treachery and inordinate selfishness.

Bad faith, false religion, and the absence of all pure generosity in the Spaniards, not only degraded and extirpated the savage, but depraved the character of the settlers, so that to this day their descendants have neither the political liberty nor the social and personal virtues of men whose an

cestors are distinguished by equity, mercy, and the true love of God.

The effects of Christian principles in the establishments of men are made very clear in all American history; and that small section of the continent which is called Danish America, and which has been favoured by the pure ministry of Christianity, affords striking instances of the excellence of that religion in the formation of social character, and in the preservation and protection of all that is dear to man.

Though Mr. Egede, the first Danish missionary to Greenland, and his companions and helpers in the ministry were excellent men, they were not able, during fifteen years' residence with the Greenlanders, much to enlighten their minds or improve their manners; though a few of the latter gave patient attention to the kind instructions of the missionaries, and professed to believe what they were taught.

It is here proper to state, that about the year 1722, one year after Mr. Egede established himself in Greenland, a certain Count Zinzendorf, in Germany, projected a religious association, called Unitas Fratrum, or the United Brothers, in which the members of the society were to live together, cultivate piety, and labour for the good of the whole.

Count Zinzendorf laid out an extensive estate in Upper Lusatia, according to this plan, that would accommodate many families; and thither a considerable number of persons removed from Moravia, and established themselves. The settleVOL. III.-I