14 Dress, Habitations, &c. of the Greenlanders. the rough side is turned outwards, and the borders and seams are ornamented with some narrow stripes of red leather and white dogskin. Seal skins are also manufactured, by different methods, into drawers, stockings and shoes; but among the richer sort, woollen stockings, trowsers, and caps, are worn in their stead. When they travel by sea, a great coat, made of a black smooth seal's hide, rendered water-proof, covers the rest of their dress. The women's clothes differ from the men's in several particulars; their jackets have high shoulders, and a hood still higher; they are not cut all round even at the bottom, like the men's, but form, both behind and before, a long flap, the pointed extremity of which reaches a little below the knee, and it is bordered with red cloth. The boots and shoes of the women are made of white leather, the seams of which are sewed and figured very neatly. Mothers and nurses put on a garment wide enough in the back to hold the child, which is placed in it quite naked; it is accommodated with no other swaddling clothes or cradle; and it is kept from falling through, by means of a girdle fastened about the mother's waist. Their common dress abounds with filth and vermin, but they keep their holiday garments exceedingly neat. In winter the Greenlanders live in houses, and in summer in tents ; the former are four yards in breadth, and from eight to twenty-four yards in length, according to the number of persons who are to live in them, and they are made of a height just sufficient for a person to stand erect. They are generally built on some elevated place, in order that the melted snow may run off the better. The Greenlander never builds far from the sea, because from it he derives his whole subsistence: and the entrance to his house is also towards the sea-side. The houses have neither door nor chimney; the purpose of both is supplied by a vaulted passage made of stone and earth, five or six yards long, entering through the middle of the house; but it is made so low, that it is necessary to creep rather than walk into the houses. This long passage, thus constructed, is well calculated to keep off the wind and cold, and let out the dense air. The walls are hung on the inside with old worn tent and boat-skins, with which also the roof is covered on the outside. From the middle of the house to the wall, extending its whole length, there is a raised floor a foot high, made of boards, and covered with skins, which is divided into several apartments, resembling horse-stalls, by skins, reaching from the posts that support the roof to the wall. Each family has such a separate stall, and the number of families occupying one such house are from three to ten. On these floors they sleep upon skins, and sit upon them all the day long; the men in front, with their legs hanging down, and the women cross-legged behind. The women cook and sew, and the men prepare their tackle and tools for hunting and fishing. On the front wall of the house are several windows, made of the entrails of the seal, dressed and sewed so neatly, that they serve as a defence against the wind and snow, and at the same time admit the light; on a bench under these windows strangers sit and sleep. To every family there is a fire-place, and one or more lamps of the trainoil made from seals; by means of these the houses are kept warm with a steady temperature, and by these they dress their meat, which chiefly consists of the flesh of seals. On the outside of the mansionhouse they have little store-houses, in which they lay up their stock of fish, flesh, oil, and dry herrings. Whatever they catch in win Of their Implements, Boats, &c. 15 ter is preserved under the snow, and their oil is kept in leathern pouches made of seal-skin. Close by their store-houses, they lay up their boats on some raised posts bottom upwards, under which they hang their hunting and fishing tackle, and skins. From a review of these particulars an European, who had been long and intimately acquainted with the habits and manners of the Greenlanders, was led to the following reflection: "We are," says he, "at a loss which to admire most, their excellently-contrived housekeeping, which is comprised within the smallest circle; their content and satisfaction in poverty, in the midst of which they imagine that they are richer than we; or finally, their apparent order and stillness in such a narrow and crowded space." About April they move out of their houses with great joy, and spend the summer in tents, which are formed by means of long poles covered with skins; these are wrought with surprising neatness, and the entrails of the seal serve for doors, which are so manufactured as at once to admit the light, and defend them from the cold air. So careful are they of preserving neatness and order in their tents, that they boil their victuals in the open air. The mistress of the family lays up her furniture in a corner of the tent, over which she hangs a white leathern curtain, wrought by the needle with a variety of fig. ures. On this curtain she fastens her looking-glass, pin-cushion, and ribbons. To each family there is a separate tent; though they sometimes admit their relations, or a poor family or two; so that frequently twenty people reside in the same tent. Of their Implements, Boats, &c. The methods and implements made use of by the Greenlanders, for procuring their maintenance, are extremely simple, but in their hands, well adapted to the purpose. In former times they made use of bows, two yards in length, for land-game, but these have long since given way to fowling-pieces. For sea game, five sorts of instruments are principally used. 1. The harpoon-dart with a bladder. 2. The great lance, which is about two yards long. 3. The little lance; these three weapons are used in the capture of seals. 4. The missile dart, a foot and a half in length; and 5. The hunting dart, two yards long, chiefly used for the purpose of catching seals. The Greenlanders have two kinds of boats, conveniently adapted for procuring their sustenance. The first is the great, or women's boat, called the umiak; it is from twelve to eighteen yards long, four or five feet wide, and about three deep; it is constructed with slender laths, fastened together with whalebone, and covered over with tanned seal-skins. These boats are commonly rowed by four women, and steered by a fifth. Never, but in cases of great emergency, do the men afford any assistance in navigating these boats. The kaiak, or little men's boat, is six yards long, sharp at head and stern, like a weaver's shuttle, scarcely eighteen inches broad, and about a foot deep: the construction of this boat is very similar to that of that umiak; only that the top is covered with skins. In the middle of the upper covering there is a round hole, with a rim. of wood or bone, into which the Greenlander slips with his feet; the rim reaching just above his hips, he tucks the under part of his great coat so tight round the rim, that the water cannot in any place penetrate. On the side of the kaiak lies his harpoon, and in the front his line, rolled up on a little round raised seat made for it, and behind him is his seal-skin bladder. He holds his oar, in the middle, with 16 Manners and Habits of the Greenlanders. both hands, and strikes the water on each side very quick, and as regularly as if he were beating time. Thus equipped, he is prepared for fishing or travelling. In these kaiaks the Greenlanders row so swiftly, that if a letter requires expedition, they will make a voyage sixty or seventy miles in a day they fear no storm, and pass on regardless of the most boisterous billows, because they can dart over them with the greatest ease, and if a whole wave should overwhelm them, yet they are quickly seen swimming again upon the surface. If they are even overset, they are able, while they lie with their heads downwards under water, by giving themselves a certain swing with their oars, to mount again into their proper position. But if they have the misfortune to lose their oar, they are almost sure of being lost, in which case they contrive to bind themselves to their kaiak, in order that their body may be found and buried. The seal is of the utmost importance to the Greenlanders: the flesh supplies them with substantial food; the fat furnishes oil for lamp-light and kitchen-fire, and is used as sauce for their fish. The oil is bartered also with the factor for all kinds of necessaries. With the fibres of the sinews of the seal, the Greenlanders can sew better than with thread or silk. Of the entrails they make their windows, shirts, and the bladders which they use with their harpoons. Even the blood, when boiled with other ingredients, is eaten as soup. Formerly, for want of iron, the bones of the seal were manufactured into into all sorts of instruments and working tools; and the skins are now used for clothing, for covering their boats and tents, and for many other purposes. Of the Manners and Habits of the Greenlanders. ACCORDING to outward appearance, the lives of the Greenlanders are regulated, in general, by the strict principles of propriety, and decorum; nothing unbecoming is to be heard or seen in their words and actions. Single women very rarely have illegitimate children; but it sometimes happens to a divorced wife or a young widow, who, though held in great contempt for the looseness of her morals, frequently makes a fortune by selling her children to those persons who have none of their own. A man does not marry till he is about twenty years of age, when he chooses a woman not much younger than himself, with whom he expects no dowry but her clothes, knife, lamp, and sometimes a stone boiler to her skill in housewifery and sewing, he pays a principal regard; and the women, on the other hand, esteem individuals of the opposite sex in proportion as they excel in hunting and fishing. Polygamy, though by no means common among the Greenlanders, is not altogethe unknown; and so far from its being considered a disgraceful thing for a man to have a plurality of wives, he is respected for his industry, by which he is enabled to maintain them: but to be without children, is deemed a matter of great reproach, and therefore, in such cases, the matrimonial contract is easily broken, for the man has only to leave the house in anger, and not return again for several days; and the wife, understanding his meaning, packs up her clothes, and removes to her own friends. The Greenland women shew great affection for their offspring, and carry them wherever they go, suckling them till they are three or four years old, as the country affords no food proper for tender in Of the Ice Islands and Climate. 17 fants. Children are brought up without severity; they stand in need of no chastisement, for they run about as quietly as lambs, and fall into few extravagances; the nearer they arrive to years of understanding, and the more employment they are engaged in, the more tractable they are. Instances of ingratitude from grown-up children towards their aged and helpless parents, are very rarely to be met with. As soon as the boy can make use of his hands and feet, his father furnishes him with a little bow and arrow, and exercises him in shooting at a target, in throwing stones at a mark by the sea side, or else he gives him a knife to carve play-things, by which he becomes fit for the future business of life. Towards his tenth year the father provides him with a kaiak to practise rowing, oversetting, and rising again, fishing and fowling. When he is fifteen he must go out with his father to catch seals, and the first he takes is consecrated to purposes of festivity for the family and neighbours. During the repast the young champion relates his achievment, and in what manner he performed it; from this day the females begin to think of finding him a bride. But the youth who is unable to catch seals is held in the greatest contempt, and is obliged to subsist on woman's diet. At the age of twenty years he must make his own kaiak and to 's, and fully equip himself for his profession; soon after this he mairies, and dwells with his parents as long as they live, his mother always retaining the management of the house. Of the Ice Islands, and Climate. ICE ISLAND is a name given by sailors to a great quantity of ice collected into one huge mass, and floating about upon the seas near or within the polar circles. Many of these are to be met with on the coasts of Spitzbergen, to the great danger of the shipping employed in the Greenland fishery. In the midst of these tremendous masses, navigators have been arrested in their career, and frozen to death. The forms assumed by the ice in this chilling climate, are extremely pleasing to the most incurious eye. The surface of that which is congealed from the sea-water is flat and even hard, opaque, resembling white sugar, and incapable of being slid on. The greater pieces or fields, are many leagues in length: the lesser are called the meadows of the seals, on which, at times, those animals frolick by hundreds. The motion of the lesser pieces is as rapid as the currents; the greater, which are sometimes two hundred leagues long, and sixty or eighty broad, move slowly and majestically. The approximation of two great fields produces a most singular phenomenon : they force smaller pieces out of the water, and add them to their own surface, till at length the whole forms an aggregate of tremend ous height. They float in the sea like so many rugged mountains, and are sometimes five or six hundred yards thick, the far greater part of which is concealed beneath the water. Those which remain in this frozen climate receive continual growth; others are gradually wafted into southern latitudes, and melt by degrees by the heat of the sun, till they waste away, and disappear in the boundless element. The collision of the great fields of ice in high latitudes, is often attended with a noise, that for a time takes away the sense of hearing any thing else; and that of the lesser, with a grinding of unspeaka 18 Persons and Manners of the Icelanders. ble horror. The water which dashes against the mountainous ice, freezes into an infinite variety of forms, and gives the voyager ideal towns, streets, churches, steeples, and every shape which imagination can paint. Besides the fields of ice, there are icebergs, or large bodies of ice, that fill the vallies between the high mountains in northern latitudes. Among the most remarkable are those near the coast of Spitzbergen. They are seven in number, at considerable distances from each other: each fills the vallies for tracts unknown, in a region totally inaccessible in the internal parts. The last exhibits a front three hundred feet high, emulating the emerald in colour; cataracts of melted snow precipitate down various parts, and black spiring mountains, streaked with white, bound the sides, and rise crag above crag, as far as the eye can reach in the back-ground. At times, immense fragments break off, and tumble into the water with a most alarming crash. Similar icebergs are frequent in all the arctic regions, and they often have singular and majestic forms. Masses have been assuming the shape of a Gothic church, with arched windows and doors, and all the rich drapery of that style, composed, apparently, of crystal, of the richest sapphirine blue; tables with one or more feet; immense flat-roofed temples, like those of Luxor on the Nile, supported by round transparent columns of cerulean hue, float by the astonished spectator. In the more northerly parts, the sun never sets for several weeks together, during the months of June and July; which is of great advantage to the inhabitants, who, in their short summer, can shoot and fish at all hours; and also to the sailors; who would otherwise run a great hazard from the floating ice. The sun never rises there for the same length of time in the depth of winter, during which period there is a moderate twilight, arising from the reflection of the sun's rays on the tops of the hills. Besides, the nights here are never so dark as they are in more southerly countries; for, 1st, the ice and snow with which the earth is covered, reflect all the light which proceeds from the moon and stars; 2d, at this season the moon never descends below the horizon for several days together; and 3d, the northern lights are much more powerful and brilliant there than they are in our climates. ICELAND. Iceland, a large island in the northern Atlantic ocean belonging to Denmark, is situated between 63o and 67° N. lat. and between 129 and 25 W. long. Its length from east to west is about 280 miles, its mean breadth from north to south 210, and its superficial contents may The population is estimated at be estimated at 40,000 square miles. 48,000. Persons and Manners of the Icelanders. THE Icelanders differ much in their persons from those who have |