Of the Land Animals, and Land Fowls or Birds of Greenland; and how they hunt and hill them.

THERE are no venomous serpents or insects, no ravenous wild beasts to be seen in Greenland, if you except the bear, which some will have to be an amphibious animal, as he lives chiefly upon the ice in the most Northern parts, and feeds upon seals and fish. He very seldom appears near the colony, in which I had taken up my quarters. He is of a very large size, and of{60} a hideous and frightful aspect, with white long hairs: he is greedy of human blood[27]. The natives tell us moreover of another kind of ravenous beasts, which they call Amarok, which eagerly pursue other beasts, as well as men; yet none of them could say, they ever had seen them, but only had it from others by hearsay; and whereas none of our own people, who have travelled up and down the country, ever met with any such beast, therefore I take it to be a mere fable.

Rein deer are in some places in so great numbers that you will see whole herds of them[28];{61} and when they go and feed in herds they are dangerous to come at. The natives spend the whole summer season in hunting of rein deer, going up to the innermost parts of the bays, and carrying, for the most part, their wives and children along with them, where they remain till the harvest season comes on. In the mean while they with so much eagerness hunt, pursue, and destroy these poor deer, that they have no{62} place of safety, but what the Greenlanders know; and where they are in any number, there they chase them by clap-hunting, setting upon them on all sides, and surrounding them with all their women and children, to force them into defiles and narrow passages, where the men armed lay in wait for them and kill them: and when they have not people enough to surround them, then they put up white poles (to make up the number that is wanted) with pieces of turf to head them, which frightens the deer, and hinders it from escaping.

There are also vast numbers of hares, which are white summer and winter, very fat and of a good taste. There are foxes of different colours, white, grey, and blueish; they are of a lesser size than those of Denmark and Norway, and not so hairy, but more like martens. The natives commonly catch them alive in traps, built of stones like little huts. The other four-footed animals, which ancient historians tell us are found in Greenland, are sables, martens, wol............