 seemed in their eyes the most
arrant witchcraft, and baptism likewise. One time, says Niels Egede,
when they had seen some Europeans going through this ceremony, 'an
angekok asked me why I was always denouncing those who practised
witchcraft, when here was one of our own priests performing sorceries
over us?' To which Egede found no better answer than that it was 'in
accordance with Christ's command;' he did not think 'the dog had any
right to know more.' Once, when the missionaries told a man 'that he
should especially thank God who had given him many children,' he became
very angry and answered, 'It is a great lie to say that God has given
me children, for I made them myself. "Is it not so?" he said, turning
to his wife.'

Their criticism of the doctrine and practice of the missionaries was
sometimes so mordant that the intelligent and honest merchant Dalager
has to admit that 'even the stupidest natives from far beyond the
colony have often confronted me with such objections on these points as
have made me groan, while the perspiration stood on my brow.'

Divine service seems at first to have bored them very much; they
preferred to hear about Europe, and would ask many naive questions:
'Whether the King was very big? Was he strong? Was he a great angekok?
And had he caught many whales?' Paul Egede records that when they
thought his father's sermons too long 'they went up to him and asked
him if he was not soon going to stop. Then he had to measure off upon
his arm how much of his discourse was left, whereupon they went back to
their places and sat moving their hands down their arms every moment.
When the preacher paused at the end of a paragraph, they made haste to
move the hand right out to the finger-tips; but when he began again
they cried "Ama" (that is, "Still more") and moved the hand back again
half way up the arm. The singing was in my department, and when I
began a new psalm, or sang for too long, they would often hold a wet
seal-skin mitten over my mouth.'

The missionaries' treatment of the natives