If the old lands, formerly inhabited and manured by the Norway colonies, were anew peopled with men and cattle; they would, without doubt, yield as much as either Iceland or Feroe, seeing there is as good pasture ground as in those islands. I shall forbear to mention salmon and cod fishing, as it seems at present to be but of little or no importance, especially on the West side; though I am credibly informed by the natives, that on the Southern coast they catch abundance of fine large cod. Yet this may be more than sufficiently compensated by the whale fishery on the North and the capture of seals on the South, which if rightly undertaken, and with vigour set on foot, will bring as much, nay far more profit than the salmon and cod catching does in other places; chiefly the seal capture, which can be undertaken at very small expenses, _viz._ at the coast with strong nets, with which they may catch many thousands in Greenland; which, if hitherto not practised, ought to be imputed to negligence and want of a good regulation. In short, Greenland, as we see, is very convenient for trading, and may be very well worth one’s while to take in hand. But there is little to be done, without an established and formed company of men of substance as well as resolution; being altogether impossible and above the strength of any private man to master it and go through with it.
_The Religion, or rather Superstition, of the Greenlanders._
The Greenlanders’ ignorance of a Creator would make one believe they were atheists, or rather naturalists. For, when they have been asked from whence they thought that Heaven and Earth had their origin, they have answered nothing, but that it had always been so. But if we consider, that they have some notion of the immortality of souls[36], and that there is another much happier life after this; moreover, as they are addicted to different kinds of superstition, and that they hold there is a Spiritual Being, which they call Torngarsuk, to whom they ascribe a supernatural power, though not the creation or the production of creatures (of whose origin they tell many absurd and ridiculous stories), all this, I say, supposes some sort of worship; although they do not themselves, out of their brutish stupidity, understand or infer so much, or make use of the light of nature and the remaining spark of the image of God in their souls, to consider the invisible being of God by his visible works, which is the creation of the world.--Rom. i. For which reason, instead of attaining the knowledge of God and true religion, they are unhappily fallen into many gross superstitions.