The fiord forks a short distance above Julianashaab, the southern branch leading to Brattahlid and Gardar, the northern, to Krakortok, which place it was our design to visit first.
Mr. Anthon not only offered to be our pilot, as before stated, but he likewise offered us his Greenland boat. We had boats of our own, and good ones too; but then what so appropriate for a Greenland fiord as a Greenland boat? So, at least, said our pastor-pilot, and so we were all willing to confess. But what was a Greenland boat?
A Greenland boat is a curiosity in marine architecture. Mr. Anthon took us down to look at the one he had offered us. It was turned bottom up on a scaffolding, so that we could stand under it and almost see through it, for it was semi-transparent like a bladder. When I thumped it with a stick, it rattled like a drum.
“There it is,” said the pastor; “how do you like the looks of it?”
THE OOMIAK AND CREW.
“What! that thing?” exclaimed the captain, with ill-concealed contempt; “go to sea in a thing like that?”
“Certainly,” said the pastor; “why not?”
Then he called three or four people, who had it off the scaffolding in a twinkling and down into the water, where it floated like a balloon that had been set adrift by mistake upon the sea.
“It’s a woman’s boat,” explained the pastor.