The men take no charge of any of the domestic opera tions. The women must make clothes, boots, canoes, and tents, dress leather, clean and dry clothes and boots, gut and dismember the spoil, cook the meat, cut the pot-stone lamps, prepare oil and wicks, and build houses and tents. The girls are employed to this business from the time they are twelve years old. The boys are, from their first childhood, regarded as the future masters of the house. The Greenlanders never strike their children, who are very untractable until their sixth and seventh year ; after wards they follow their parents very willingly, and spew with their increasing age a still more respectful behaviour towards them.
The men seldom marry before the twentieth year of their age ; and the women in their seventeenth or eighteenth year. The bridegroom never concerns himself about marriage dowry ; he is well satisfied if his bride understands house wifery ; that is, all the business which we have already mentioned as belonging to the female. The parents never interfere, but they always wish that their son-in-law should be a good hunter ; and on the other hand, that the wife should understand housewifery. The girl always makes great difficulties, runs to the mountains, or cries pro forma, and the bridegroom generally takes her by force from the house of her parents, and puts her, supported by some old women, in his umiak, which is lying on shore. lie brings her to his house, and they are considered as mar ried. They never marry their relations. Polygamy is not very common among the unconverted, and is strongly prohibited among the baptized. It occurs, however, though very rarely, that a heathen has three or four wives. The most respected of them is she who is so fortunate as to have boys. They are not very prolific, the number of children seldom exceeding live or six. If a wife has no children, she herself often requests the man to take a se cond wife, it being thought ignominious among them not to have a family. The second and third wife is always in ferior in rank to the first. Their marriages are not indis soluble ; the man sometimes puts his wife away, and the wife also occasionally elopes, and generally retires to her parents, if she is not satisfied with the man, or with his conduct. The women bring forth their children very easi ly, and perform their usual business in the house to the last moment, and go out again the day after the delivery; they are assisted in the delivery by some old women, as many as there are in the neighbourhood; they rarely bring forth a child before the proper time ; the birth of a child is always followed by a dinner. As the people are
not very prolific, the coast is very thinly inhabited ; the population of which was stated to have been about 20,000 souls, on the arrival of the first missionary, Mr Hans Egede. The small-pox, carried hither from Europe in the year 1733, swept away more than 3000 souls. Other diseases diminished the number of the natives from time to time very much, which, according to the latest accounts given by the governors and missionaries, does not surpass the number of 7000 on the whole coast, from the 60° to the 73° of Latitude. Venereal diseases are unknown. It is a curious circumstance, that the fruitfulness of the na tive women increases, when they are married to Euro peans. This is still perceptible at this day in Greenland ish families, mixed with Europeans at the time of the first mission (1721), the European features being still visible.
The Greenlanders are A:ery sociable; although they do not live in towns or villages, they like to visit and to be visit ed. A man or woman never; pays a visit to a person re siding at a distance, without making some present at the house she visits, either a skin or fowl, or some sinew. They are very fond of making bargains, and often part with their most useful utensils in exchange for trifles, par ticularly to satisfy She capricious frivolity of their wives. No one desires to usurp any authority over another, to make regulations for him, or to call him to account for his actions; for, as they have no riches, one individual sup ports another ; the helpless finds refuge in the house of the more fortunate, without being related to him, and each Greenlander has his landed property where he resides. They may therefore change their residences as often as they like. Whatever the sea drives on shore, particularly floating timber, is the property of him who has taken it up, and brought it on shore. Notwithstanding, however, their honesty towards each other, they are not scrupulous in stealing from Europeans.