Kings have a wonderful capacity for taking time to “consider matters”—sometimes to the extent of passing out of time altogether, and leaving the consideration to successors. But the King on this occasion was true to his word. He gave Egede a private audience, and in 1719 sent orders to the magistrates of Bergen to collect all the opinions and information that could be gathered in regard to the trade with Greenland and the propriety of establishing a colony there, with a statement of the privileges that might be desired by adventurers wishing to settle in the new land. But, alas! no adventurers wished to settle there; the royal efforts failed, and poor Egede was left to fall back on his own exertions and private enterprise.
For another year this indefatigable man vainly importuned the King and the College of Missions. At last he prevailed on a number of sympathisers to hold a conference. These, under his persuasive powers, subscribed forty pounds a-piece towards a mission fund. Egede set a good example by giving sixty pounds. Then, by begging from the bishop and people of Bergen, he raised the fund to about two thousand pounds. With this sum he bought a ship, and called it the Hope. Two other vessels were chartered and freighted—one for the whale fishery, the other to take home news of the colony. The King, although unable to start the enterprise, appointed Egede missionary to the colony with a salary of sixty pounds a year, besides a present of a hundred pounds for immediate expenses, and finally, on the 12th May 1721, the indomitable Hans, with his heroic wife and four children, set sail for “Greenland’s icy mountains,” after an unprecedented ten years’ conflict.
Dangers and partial disasters greeted them on their arrival, in July, at Baal’s River, latitude 64 degrees, where they established the colony of Godhaab.
It would require a volume to tell of Hans Egede’s difficulties, doings, and sufferings in the new land. Suffice it to say that they were tremendous, and that he acted as the pioneer to the interesting missions of the Moravian Brethren to the same neighbourhood.
Hans Egede had been several years at his post when the meeting already described took place between him and the northern Eskimos.
Chapter Twenty Four.
Escape from Present Danger, and a Curious Instance of the Effects of Gin.
Although Nunaga, Kabelaw, and the children were now happily re-united to friends and kindred, their dangers were by no means over, for a wide space of ice-blocked sea separated the small island from the shores of Greenland, and their supply of meat was not sufficient, even with economy, to maintain the whole party for more than a couple of days.