They were good enough for the Eskimos,
they seem to have thought at Copenhagen. There followed a terrible
winter, during which mutiny and murder were threatened. "It is a
pity," writes the missionary, "that while we sleep secure among the
heathen savages, with so-called Christian people our lives are not
safe." As a matter of fact they were not, for the soldiers joined in
the mutiny against Egede as the cause of their having to live in
such a place, and had not sickness and death smitten the
malcontents, neither he nor the governor would have come safe
through the winter. On the Eskimos this view of the supposed fruits
of Christian teaching made its own impression. After seeing a woman
scourged on shipboard for misbehavior, they came innocently enough
to Egede and suggested that some of their best Angekoks be sent down
to Denmark to teach the people to be sober and decent.
There came a breathing spell after ten years of labor in what had
often enough seemed to him the spiritual as well as physical
ice-barrens of the North, when Egede surveyed a prosperous mission,
with trade established, a hundred and fifty children christened and
schooled, and many of their elders asking to be baptized. In the
midst of his rejoicing the summer's ship brought word from Denmark
that the King was dead, and orders from his successor to abandon the
station.
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