even should she attain a great age. A widow especially has often great power, governing the house as long as she lives, and having the upper hand of her daughters-in-law. But, as a rule, when people grow so old that they cannot take care of themselves, they are apt to be treated with scant consideration, especially women. Sometimes the younger generation will even go the length of making fun of them, and to this the poor old people submit with great patience, regarding it simply as the way of the world.
That the reader may form some conception of a primitive Eskimo's habits of thought on moral questions, I quote the following letter from a converted Greenlander to Paul Egede.[1] I reproduce it here, because it in many respects bears out the views above expressed, and Egede's book 'Accounts of Greenland,'[2] in which this translation is printed (pp. 230-236) is now not easily obtainable. The writer was a heathen who had been baptised by Paul Egede's father, Hans Egede. The letter, which was of course written in Eskimo, gives evidence not only of a peculiar moral point of view, but also of a keen understanding, and of feelings which, as Paul Egede says, one would scarcely expect 'in so stupid a
