The Greenlanders’ Persons, Complexion, and Temperament.

THE Greenlanders, as well man as womankind, are well shaped and proportioned, rather short than tall, and strong built, inclined to be fat and corpulent; their faces broad, thick lips, and flat nosed; their hair and eyes black, their complexion a very dark tawny; though I have seen some pretty fair. Their bodies are of a vigorous constitution. There are seldom found any sick or lame, and but few distempers are known among them, besides weakness of the eye-sight, which is caused by the sharp and piercing spring winds, as well as the snow and ice, that hurt the sight.{120}

I have met with some that seemed infected with a kind of leprosy; yet (what is surprising to me), though they converse with others, and lay with them in one bed, it is not catching. They that dwell in the most Northern parts are often miserably plagued with dysenteries or bloody fluxes, breast diseases, boils, and epilepsy, or falling sickness, &c. There were no epidemical or contagious diseases known among them, as plague, small-pox, and such like, till the year 1734, when one of the natives, who with several others were brought over to Denmark, and together with his companions had the small-pox at Copenhagen, coming home again to his native country brought the infection amongst them; of which there were swept away in and about the colony about two thousand persons. For as the natives as well as the animals of this climate are of a hot nature, they cannot bear the outward heat, much less the inward, caused by this burning distemper, which inflames the mass of blood to that degree, that it cannot, by any means, be quenched. They are very full of blood, which{121} is observed by their frequent bleeding at the nose.