Hero Tales of the Far North | Page 9

in the fall of 1909 the statement was flashed around the world
that the North Pole had at last been reached, a name long unfamiliar ran
from mouth to mouth with that of the man who claimed to be its
discoverer. Dr. Cook was coming to Copenhagen, the daily despatches
read, on the Danish Government steamer Hans Egede. A shipload of
reporters kept an anxious lookout from the Skaw for the vessel so
suddenly become famous, but few who through their telescopes made
out the name at last upon the prow of the ship gave it another thought
in the eager welcome to the man it brought back from the perils of the
Farthest North. Yet the name of that vessel stood for something of
more real account to humanity than the attainment of a goal that had
been the mystery of the ages. No such welcome awaited the explorer
Hans Egede, who a hundred and seventy-two years before sailed
homeward over that very route, a broken, saddened man, and all he
brought was the ashes of his best-beloved that they might rest in her
native soil. No gold medal was struck for him; the people did not greet
him with loud acclaim. The King and his court paid scant attention to
him, and he was allowed to live his last days in poverty. Yet a greater
honor is his than ever fell to a discoverer: the simple natives of
Greenland long reckoned the time from his coming among them. To
them he was in their ice-bound home what Father Damien was to the
stricken lepers in the South seas, and Dr. Grenfell is to the fishermen of
Labrador.
Hans Poulsen Egede, the apostle of Greenland, was a Norwegian of
Danish descent. He was born in the Northlands, in the parish of
Trondenäs, on January 31, 1686. His grandfather and his father before
him had been clergymen in Denmark, the former in the town of West
Egede, whence the name. Graduated in a single year from the
University of Copenhagen, "at which," his teachers bore witness, "no
one need wonder who knows the man," he became at twenty-two pastor
of a parish up in the Lofoden Islands, where the fabled maëlstrom
churns. Eleven years he preached to the poor fisherfolk on Sunday, and
on week-days helped his parishioners rebuild the old church. When it

was finished and the bishop came to consecrate it, he chided Egede
because the altar was too fine; it must have cost more than they could
afford.
"It did not cost anything," was his reply. "I made it myself."
No wonder his fame went far. When the church bell of Vaagen called,
boats carrying Sunday-clad fishermen were seen making for the island
from every point of the compass. Great crowds flocked to his church;
great enough to arouse the jealousy of neighboring preachers who were
not so popular, and they made it so unpleasant that his wife at last tired
of it. They little dreamed that they were industriously paving the way
for his greater work and for his undying fame.
The sea that surges against that rockbound coast ever called its people
out in quest of adventure. Some who went nine hundred years ago
found a land in the far Northwest barred by great icebergs; but once
inside the barrier, they saw deep fjords like their own at home, to which
the mountains sloped down, covered with a wealth of lovely flowers.
On green meadows antlered deer were grazing, the salmon leaped in
brawling brooks, and birds called for their mates in the barrens. Above
it all towered snow-covered peaks. They saw only the summer day;
they did not know how brief it was, and how long the winter night, and
they called the country Greenland. They built their homes there, and
other settlers came. They were hardy men, bred in a harsh climate, and
they stayed. They built churches and had their priests and bishops, for
Norway was Christian by that time. And they prospered after their
fashion. They even paid Peter's Pence to Rome. There is a record that
their contribution, being in kind, namely, walrus teeth, was sold in
1386 by the Pope's agent to a merchant in Flanders for twelve livres,
fourteen sous. They kept up communication with their kin across the
seas until the Black Death swept through the Old World in the
Fourteenth Century; Norway, when it was gone, was like a vast tomb.
Two-thirds of its people lay dead. Those who were left had enough to
do at home; and Greenland was forgotten.
The seasons passed, and the savages, with whom the colonists had
carried on a running feud, came out of the frozen North and

overwhelmed them. Dim traditions that were whispered among the
natives for centuries told of