PATIENT WAITERS.
The Greenlanders’ mode of life has accustomed them to take things as they come. If they find no game, they know how to go hungry, and in their relations with each other and with Europeans they manifest the same astounding patience.
I would see them in the morning standing by the hour in the passage of the colonial manager’s house, or waiting in the snow outside his door, to speak to him or his assistant, who happened to be otherwise engaged.
They had probably some little business to transact with those officials before starting for their homes, often many miles from the colony, and it might be of the greatest importance to them to get away as soon as possible. If the weather happened to look threatening, every minute would be more than precious; but there they would stand waiting, as immovable as ever, and to all appearance as indifferent.
If I asked them if they were going to start, they only answered: “I don’t know. Perhaps, if the weather don’t get worse,� or something to that effect; but I never once heard the smallest murmur of impatience.
The following occurrence, for which my informant vouches, illustrates this side of their character:
An inspector at Godthaab sent a boat’s crew into the Ameralik Fiord to mow grass for his goats. They remained a long time away, and no one could understand what had become of them. At last they returned, and when the inspector asked why they had been so long, they answered that when they got to the place the grass was too short, so they had to settle down and wait till it grew.[Pg 54]