While they thought the strangers came only to trade they
were hospitable enough, but when they saw them build, clearly intent
on staying, they made signs that they had better go. They pointed to
the sun that sank lower toward the horizon every day, and shivered
as if from extreme cold, and they showed their visitors the
icebergs and the snow, making them understand that it would cover
the house by and by. When it all availed nothing and the winter came
on, they retired into their huts and cut the acquaintance of the
white men. They were afraid that they had come to take revenge for
the harm done their people in the olden time. There was nothing for
it, then, but that Egede must go to them, and this he did.
They seized their spears when they saw him coming, but he made signs
that he was their friend. When he had nothing else to give them, he
let them cut the buttons from his coat. Throughout the fifteen years
he spent in Greenland Egede never wore furs, as did the natives. The
black robe he thought more seemly for a clergyman, to his great
discomfort. He tells in his diary and in his letters that often when
he returned from his winter travels it could stand alone when he
took it off, being frozen stiff. After a while he got upon
neighborly terms with the Eskimos; but, if anything, the discomfort
was greater.
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