"Aaron," said the steersman in a commanding voice, "it must be your place to move that piece of Greenland provender out of doors, for you only have used it."

Kitterik's idea was highly approved of by most present; and Aaron would have had to obey, if the pastor had not put in his veto to the proposal.

"If that fat is really the Greenlanders' food," said Egede, "it would be unkind and ungrateful in us to throw our hosts' provisions out of doors. I have found a sealskin here which we can throw over the evil-smelling lump."

"Heaven keep us from such provisions!" whispered the smith to his next neighbour; "I had rather keep to our monotonous diet of groats, bread, and beer for ever!"

No. VI.

GREENLAND MANNERS.

"Children we are all

Of one great Father, in whatever clime,

His providence hath cast the seed of life;
All tongues,-all colours."

SOUTHEY.

AARON had established himself before one of the two small windows, and bored a tiny hole in it with his pocket-knife, partly to let in a little fresh air, and partly to have a peep out of doors, though the latter was very circumscribed on account of the darkness. He had not long commenced his observations, when he exclaimed in a terrified tone to his comrades, "We seem to me to have got into a den of murderers. I see three brown Greenlanders digging a deep grave in the snow just opposite our abode, and it is doubtless intended to contain our bodies. Now!" he continued, applying his eye again to the peep-hole; "now they are bringing out a dead body which is to precede us apparently. What trouble they are taking to drag it along! Now it is in! and they are closing the grave again."

An invincible fit of curiosity impelled Aaron to rush out of the house, and even overcame his dread of the supposed murderers. "Good evening, my friends! you are very busy, so late as it is! What is that lying by you?"

With these words, which, as may be imagined, were utterly incomprehensible to the persons addressed, Aaron approached the three Greenlanders, who went on quietly with their occupation, as Aaron stooped down and examined the supposed corpse. The

moment he had done so, however, he returned to the house, and resumed his post at the window in silence.

"Well!" said the bookkeeper, inquiringly. "What was it?" "Greenland provisions," replied Aaron, sulkily. "A dead seal which smelt putrid enough. I suppose the snow is the larder where the Greenlanders store up their provisions."

Before an hour had elapsed, the door of the hut was opened; that is, the sealskin curtain was pushed aside, and some goodnatured Greenlanders appeared with their hands full of food, intending to feast their guests hospitably with the choicest delicacies they possessed. These, however, consisted only of illcooked, strong-smelling seals' flesh, and bladders filled with train-oil. The guests, not to affront their kind hosts, made signs as though they would gladly partake of the offered gifts. Egede, determined to set a good example, took a piece of meat out of the soapstone dish, and raised the primitive bottle to his lips, though he could not prevail upon himself to taste it. When it came round to Paul Egede, he said to his father, "Must I drink out of that thing? It smells just like the stuff you used to have your boots cleaned with at Vogen. I think the smell is enough!"

The Greenlanders, who, to their surprise, found the flasks were not emptied, thought their own example would be the best encouragement to their guests to enjoy the train oil; so they at once drank off the liquid, stroking their stomachs afterwards with much complacency.

It seemed the will of Heaven the colonists should be punished for their late murmurs, and made to long for the homely food they had so recently despised. For three whole days and nights the weather continued so fearfully bad, that they were compelled to remain in the shelter of the Greenlanders' huts, to eat their wretched provisions, and sleep on sealskin beds. There was one good thing in this constrained sojourn, however, and that was the more minute acquaintance with the Greenlanders' way of life which it gave Egede. They were gentle, timid people he discovered, and might put many Europeans to shame by the contented way in which they bore their wretched fate.

When Egede and his sons visited their huts, they found them subdivided into as many partitions as there were families, by sealskin curtains. Each division had a train-oil lamp in it, which burnt day and night, thus warming as well as lighting the habitation, and doing instead of a stove; and the smell of all this oil, as well as the sealskins which lay about heated the air so thoroughly, that the

Greenlanders suffer less from cold (though without fire in their houses) than many would suppose possible, and generally sit half naked in their huts, the children very often entirely so. The women were busy in making garments of sealskins and birds' feathers, using the tendons and sinews of the seal instead of thread; and even a part of the entrails served, as before stated, to make a transparent covering for the windows instead of glass. In one of the huts, where between thirty and forty individuals were lodged, a poor sick woman was shown to Egede, who was apparently very suffering, had great difficulty in breathing, and was tormented by a terrible cough, which, combined with diseases of the chest and lungs, appeared to be the principal evil to which the Greenlanders were subject.

Egede turned to the sufferer, and said, with a pitying look and tone-"Poor woman! what would I not give that you could understand my words! I would give you a cup of consolation that would sweeten your pains and make your death happy. Even for you the Saviour of the world has died, that you might be saved from death and hell. May He in his mercy have compassion on you, and guide you to His heavenly kingdom!"

These words, in an accent of unmistakeable kindness, were listened to, incomprehensible as they were to them, with great apparent reverence by the Greenlanders; and when Egede ceased speaking, they made signs that they wished him to breathe upon the sick woman, as they thought that might cure her.

Egede felt doubtful whether he should do right in complying with this request. "I have no power to do miracles," he said, "and it would be a sin in me if I did anything that confirmed these poor people in their errors. God alone can help this poor woman."

"Do breathe on her, father, nevertheless!" cried little Nicholas. "See, how that short, fat man is puffing out his cheeks to try and make you understand their wishes! How can merely breathing on her be a sin ?"

"You cannot understand what I mean, my boy," said the pastor, doubtfully.

"Do blow on her," added Paul; "What can it hurt? You often blow on the fire to make it burn up!"

Then Egede breathed on the sick woman, to her great joy, as well as that of the bystanders, trying to quiet his conscience by saying, as he did so, "Of my own power I can do nothing. But

I

pray that our blessed Lord and Saviour may heal thee of thy sickness, and forgive me if I have erred. Amen!"

During all this time Aaron had been making a curious friendship with a Greenlander. This latter, whose name was Aarech, had no sooner discovered the similar-sounding name of the white man, than he began to show him every possible mark of friendship, expressing, as well as he could, the pleasure the discovery gave him. He even insisted upon Aaron's sleeping in his bed; which last most unpleasant situation Aaron resigned himself to, with a very lamentable countenance, and for the first time felt inclined to blame his mother for the name she had had him christened by.

Egede, however, founded a plan of his own on this little incident. When he was preparing to depart on the fourth morning after their arrival, the pastor called Aaron aside, and, anxious to win him over to his way of thinking, addressed him kindly as follows. "My good Aaron, it appears to me that you are marked out from among us, as likely to be useful in the great work of converting the heathen for which we are come. You are neither an ill

educated nor an ill-disposed man, and I trust you will be inclined to help to prepare the way for my teaching, which is at present utterly obstructed by my ignorance of the language of these poor people, and their inability to understand me."

"May it please your reverence!" exclaimed Aaron, in considerable alarm, "I could never succeed in teaching a starling to talk, how then can you?" "Be silent, Aaron," interrupted the pastor, "lest you say something you will have to repent of. I will tell you what to do. Remain behind us here under the protection of Aarech's friendship, and try to gain as much as possible of the Greenland tongue, marking down any word you may attain the knowledge of in this pocket-book of mine. At the same time use every endeavour to find out whether these benighted people have any kind of religious worship among them, and how it is conducted. I would willingly remain here in your stead, but as our gracious Lord the King has appointed me ruler over our little colony, I must not absent myself too long from it."

1;

"But what will become of me," pleaded Aaron, "if after your departure my friend Aarech should take it into his head to eat me up, out of the love and affection he bears me? One cannot tell these people have odd fancies; and at all events I should like to be prepared for any emergency, and have a sword and a gun left with me."

"Confidence begets confidence," replied Egede; "and they will see you trust them fully, if you remain unarmed amongst them. An axe, however, I will leave you, not so much as a weapon of

defence, but as a means of making yourself useful and agreeable to the Greenlanders."

"Another thing, reverend sir," said Aaron; "I cannot swallow their nasty train-oil, and melted snow-water disagrees with my weak stomach. I pray you, as you have not got any beer to leave with me, let me have that travelling flask you carry at your girdle. I shall never be able to exist among all these evil smells without a mouthful of spirits now and then.”

Egede handed him the flask. "I brought this small quantity of brandy with me," he said; "merely as a medicine for my little boys and myself, in case of need. That, however, thank God, we have not wanted, and I will gladly leave it you, only reminding you to use it very sparingly; remembering that though a grain of opium may secure a good night's sleep, a bottleful is certain death. And now farewell, and may God prosper you!"

Aaron looked wistfully after the departing colonists, though he obeyed without complaining. The travellers, on their return, found the home settlement in a great state of excitement, as we shall describe more particularly in the next chapter.

LETTERS FROM ALABAMA.-No. I.

Mobile, May 15, 18—.

YOUR desire to have some information of the country in which the good providence of God has for the present allotted my residence, shall be gratified so far as my opportunities of observation will admit. I shall communicate it more readily, because from the very hasty and imperfect notion I have yet formed, I think it probable that scenes, circumstances, and manners, differ widely from those to which you and I have been accustomed.

As a preliminary, however, it may not be altogether uninteresting to give a slight sketch of the voyage from Philadelphia. A sea-voyage, under the best circumstances, can scarcely be other than tedious. Even when performed in a stately and commodious vessel, with a skilful, gentlemanly, and obliging commander, a disciplined crew, and agreeable fellow-passengers, the wearied eye wanders from sea to sky and from sky to sea, in a vain search for some object to break the dreary uniformity: to-day is like yesterday, and to-morrow will be as to-day. If the poor occupationless passenger endeavour to beguile his tedium and indulge his literary propensities, by "keeping a log," so few are the facts that occur, that he is often reduced to debate with himself the propriety of