Concerning thunder and lightning, they say that two old women live together in one house in the air, who now and then fall out and quarrel about a thick and stiff outstretched seal skin (because such a skin, if beaten as a drum, has some likeness to the noise of thunder); while they are thus by the ears together, down comes the house with great bouncing and cracking, and the lamps are broken, the fires and broken pieces fly about in the air, and this, in their philosophy, is thunder and lightning. In their astronomical system, the heaven turn about upon the point of a huge rock. The snow, according to their fancy, is the blood of the dead, on account that it turns reddish if you keep it in the mouth. The rain comes from a ditch or wear above in Heaven; when it overflows there, it rains here below. They have no calendar or almanacks, nor do they compute or measure the time by weeks or years, but only by months; beginning their computation from the Sun’s first rising above their horizon in the winter; from whence they tell the month, to know exactly the season, in which every sort of fishes, sea animals, or birds seek the land; according to which they order their business. As nonsensical now as these notions of the Greenlanders are (as they in reality are), yet they come short of the Egyptian King Ptolemy’s infatuation, who by the loathsome flattery of his astronomers was persuaded that his Queen Berenice’s head of hair was translated into Heaven and astrified, if I may say so; which constellation to this day goes by the name of Coma Berenices, or Berenice’s hair; and what travellers relate of China and the East Indies, where some are of opinion, that the Sun’s eclipse is nothing but that a certain devil or sprite sometimes swallows up the Sun, and then again spews it out. CHAP. XX. _The Capacity of the Greenlanders, and their Inclination towards the Knowledge of God, and the Christian Religion; and by what Means this may easily be brought about._