Further to the north lies Jacobshav’n, which possesses a celebrity of its own as one of the most ancient of the Moravian mission-stations in the north of Greenland. Besides a church, it boasts of a college for the education and training of natives who desire to be of service to their fellow-countrymen in the capacity of catechists or teachers. So great has been the industry, and so well deserved is the influence of the missionaries, that it is difficult now to find an Eskimo woman in this part of Greenland who cannot read and write. Prior to the Danish colonisation of Greenland, the language of the natives was exclusively oral. Only through the medium of speech could they represent their simplest ideas; and the picture-writing of the North American Indians was beyond their skill. But the missionaries have raised the Eskimo tongue into the rank of written languages. At Godthaab a printing-press is in full operation, and has already produced some very interesting historical narratives and Eskimo traditions.
DANISH SETTLEMENT OF JACOBSHAV’N, GREENLAND.
As is the case with all the Greenland colonies, Jacobshav’n owes its prosperity to the seal-fishing. Moreover, the Greenland, or “right” whale, in its annual migrations southward, enters the neighbouring waters during the month of September, and furnishes employment to the fishing population.
In the neighbourhood of Jacobshav’n an enormous glacier, one of the offshoots of the great central mer de glace of Greenland, finds its way to the sea. Yet the temperature is said to be milder than at Godhav’n.
The following remarks apply, of course, to those Eskimos who still lead a nomadic life, and have profited little or nothing by the Christian civilization of the Danish settlements and Moravian missions.
Among themselves the Eskimos are known as Inuits, or “men;” the seamen of the Hudson Bay ships have long been accustomed to call them Seymos or Suckemos—names derived from the cries of Seymo or Teymo with which they hail the arrival of the traders; while the old Norsemen designated them, in allusion to their discordant shouts, or by way of expressing their infinite contempt, Skraelingers, “screamers” or “wretches.”
The European feels impelled to pity the hard fate which condemns them to inhabit one of the dreariest and most inhospitable regions of the globe, where only a few mosses and lichens, or plants scarcely higher in the scale of creation, can maintain a struggling existence; where land animals and birds are few in number; and where human life would be impossible but for the provision which the ocean waters so abundantly supply. As they live in a great degree upon fish and the cetaceans, they dwell almost always near the coast, and never penetrate inland to any considerable distance.
In the east the Eskimos, for several centuries, have been subjected to the civilizing influences of the English and the Dutch; in the west, they have long been under the iron rule of the Muscovite. In the north and the centre their intercourse with Europeans has always been casual and inconsiderable. It will therefore be understood that the different branches of this wide-spread race must necessarily exhibit some diversity of character, and that the same description of manners and mode of life will not in all points apply with equal accuracy to the savage and heathen Eskimos of the extreme northern shores and islands, the Greek Catholic Aleüts, the faithful servants of the Hudson Bay Company, and the disciples of the Moravian Brethren in Labrador or Greenland. Yet the differences are by no means important, and it may be doubted whether any other race, living under such peculiar conditions, and extending over so vast an area, can show so few and such inconsiderable specific varieties. When one thinks of an Eskimo, one naturally calls up a certain image to one’s mind: that of a man of moderate stature or under medium size, with a broad flat face, narrow tapering forehead, and narrow or more or less oblique eyes; and this image or type will be found to be realized throughout the length and breadth of Eskimo America. The Eskimo, generally speaking, would seem to have sprung from a Mongol stock; at all events, he can claim no kinship with the Red Indians. Happily for Europeans, if inferior to the latter in physical qualities, he is superior in generosity and amiability of disposition.