; for a quicker
and easier fashion of settling quarrels and punishing evil-doers it is
difficult to imagine.

The missionaries on the west coast of Greenland, unfortunately, do
not seem to have been of the same opinion. Being a heathen custom, it
was therefore, in their opinion, immoral and noxious as well; and on
the introduction of Christianity they opposed it and rooted it out.
Dalager even tells us that 'there is scarcely any vice practised among
the Greenlanders against which our missionaries preach more vehemently
than they do against this dance, affirming that it is the occasion of
all sorts of misbehaviour, especially among the young.' This policy he
did not at all approve. He admits, indeed, that the dances may be the
occasion of a few irregularities, but adds that if a girl has made up
her mind to part with her virtue, she is not likely to select so unquiet
a time and place; and one cannot but agree with him when he exclaims,
'And in truth, if people danced to such good purpose among us, we should
presently see every second moralist and advocate transformed into a
dancing-master.'

The result of this inconsiderate action on the part of the missionaries
is that, in reality, no law and no forms of justice now exist in
Greenland. The Europeans cannot, of course, or at any rate should not,
mix themselves up in the Greenlanders' private affairs. But when, on
some rare occasion, a crime of real importance occurs, the Danish
authorities feel that they must intervene. The consequences of such
intervention are sometimes rather surprising. At a settlement in North
Greenland some years ago (so I have been told), a man who had killed
his mother was punished by banishment to a desert island. In order that
he should be able to support himself in solitude, they had to give
him a new kaiak, and a small store of food to begin with. Some time
afterwards, the food having run out, he returned to the settlement and
declared that he could not live on the island, because there was not
enough game in the waters around it. He t