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Updated: June 11, 2025
They were afraid that they had come to take revenge for the harm done their people in the olden time. There was nothing for it, then, but that Egede must go to them, and this he did. They seized their spears when they saw him coming, but he made signs that he was their friend. When he had nothing else to give them, he let them cut the buttons from his coat.
Resigning his office in 1718, he went to Bergen, from which port there had been in time past considerable trade with Greenland. Here he received little or no encouragement, but the sudden death at this time of King Charles the Twelfth, giving hopes of the speedy restoration of peace, Egede thought it advisable to go to Copenhagen and personally present his memorial to the College of Missions.
In his dark moments he reproached himself with having brought only misery to those he had come to help and serve. One thorn which one would think he might have been spared rankled deep in it all. Some missionaries of a dissenting sect Egede was Lutheran had come with the smallpox ship to set up an establishment of their own.
They even went so far as to insinuate that, under a cloak of religious motive, he wished to "aggrandise his reputation;" but Egede was heroically firm some folk would say obstinate. Wearied with delays, and having reason to believe that his memorial was not properly supported, he resolved at last to go himself to the fountain-head.
It had already sent Hans Egede to Greenland and Ziegenbalg to Tranquebar, on the Coromandel Coast; and it sent its men as State officials, to undertake the work of evangelisation as a useful part of the national colonial policy. But Dober and Nitschmann were on a different footing.
"What ails you?" he asked. "From what you say," returned the Eskimo, somewhat coldly, "I see that, with you, whatever happens is best; nothing can be wrong. There is something which tells me here," he placed his hand on his breast "that that is not true." "You misunderstand me, friend," said Egede; "I did not say that nothing can be wrong.
In the midst of his rejoicing the summer's ship brought word from Denmark that the King was dead, and orders from his successor to abandon the station. Egede might stay with provisions for one year, if there was enough left over after fitting out the ship; but after that he would receive no further help. When the Eskimos heard the news, they brought their little children to the mission.
Considering the energy with which he had denounced the murders, and the vigour with which he had captured Grimlek, Angut's proposal was somewhat surprising. "Truly, that is so," answered Egede. "If I were very wicked," continued Angut, "and had done many evil deeds, I should like to be forgiven and set free; therefore, let us forgive these men, and set them free."
He had been carried out of the hole in the snow in which Egede and his party had taken refuge from the storm, and laid on a dry spot among the bushes where he could enjoy the sunshine, so that he became visible to his former friends the instant they entered the cleared space where he lay.
"So now," Egede wrote in his diary when, on July 31, 1731, he had seen the ship sail away with all his hopes, "I am left alone with my wife and three children, ten sailors and eight Eskimos, girls and boys who have been with us from the start. God let me live to see the blessed day that brings good news once more from home." His prayer was heard.
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