[Sidenote: LIBERALITY OF THE CHIEF TRADER.]
This action of the Chief Trader was the more appreciated that it was disinterested, and was uncalled for either by any official demands which were laid upon him, or by any special show of dignity or importance with which the insignificant schooner lying in the harbor could back up my claims. The State Department at Washington had, at my solicitation, requested from the Danish Government such recognition for me as had been hitherto accorded to the American and English naval expeditions; but the courteous response which came in the form of a command to the Greenland officials to furnish me with every thing in their power did not reach the settlements until the following year. The commands of his Majesty the King could not, however, have stood me in better stead than the gentlemanly instincts of Mr. Hansen.
There is little in the history of Pröven, either past or present, that will interest the readers of this narrative. What there is of it stands on the southern slope of a gneissoid spur which forms the terminus of one of the numerous islands of the vast archipelago lying between the peninsula of Svarte Huk and Melville Bay. A government-house, one story high and plastered over with pitch and tar, is the most conspicuous building in the place. A shop and a lodging-house for a few Danish employees stands next in importance. Two or three less imposing structures of the pitch and tar description, inhabited by Danes who have married native women; a few huts of stone and turf, roofed with boards and overgrown with grass; about an equal number of like description, but without the board roof, and a dozen seal-skin tents, all pitched about promiscuously among the rocks, make up the town. There is a blubber-house down by the beach, and a stunted flag-staff on the hill, from which the Danish Flag gracefully waving in the wind, gave the place a show of dignity. The dignity of civilization was further preserved by an old cannon which lay on the grass under the flag, and whose rusty throat made the welkin ring as our anchor touched the Greenland rocks.
The settlement, or _Colonien_, as the Danes distinguish it, dates back almost to the days of good old Hans Egede, and its name, as nearly as can be interpreted, signifies "Experiment;" and, after the Greenland fashion, a successful experiment it has been. Its people live, chiefly, by hunting the seal; and, of all the northern colonies, few have been as prosperous. The collections of oil and skins during some years are sufficient to freight a brig of three hundred tons.