_As I took the freedom most humbly to address to the King your Royal Father an account of the Greenland Mission’s beginning and propagation, which his Majesty with so glorious a zeal protects and encourages; so likewise, with the same most humble submission, I presume to offer to your most Serene Royal Highness this present survey or Natural History of Greenland; endeavouring by this means to insinuate and recommend to your Royal Highness’s favour and protection so pious an undertaking; because the poor Greenlanders have a right to claim your protection, as well as the kingdoms of Denmark and Norway, and are in hopes of enjoying, one day, the greatest blessings under your happy reign._ _This little Work cannot fail of a gracious reception from your Royal Highness, as it aims only at, and is calculated for, the honour of God and your Royal Family’s exaltation; the last of which wholly depends on and necessarily follows the first; for when the poor Greenlanders shall have learned to know and worship God as their Creator and Redeemer, then they will likewise learn to acknowledge and honour a Christian Sovereign as their king and ruler, through whose most Christian care and beneficence they have been brought to the knowledge of Salvation._ _May the Kingdom of God daily increase, and be spread far and wide, under the government of your Royal House. May the word of God run swiftly under the sway of its sceptre, as it doth in the East, so also now in the coldest North._ _That it may please Almighty God to make your Royal Highness’s name as the name of the great and mighty ones upon Earth; that he may establish and powerfully support the Royal Hereditary Throne, and place you as a blessing before his face to all eternity, are the hearty wishes and prayers of_ _Your Serene Royal Highness’s most obedient, most humble, and most devoted Subject and Servant_, HANS EGEDE. Copenhagen, July 20, 1741. PREFACE. [Illustration] A friend of mine, who lived some time in Greenland, published (unknown to me) some years ago, a Description of Greenland, under the title of A New Survey of Old Greenland, which, not long after my arrival in those parts, I had sketched, to satisfy some of my friends, according to the knowledge I then had acquired; but having since that time got a fuller light in these matters, partly by my own observations and partly by those of my Son Paul Egede, who has been four years missionary in the North West colony of Greenland, I have found it necessary to perfect and enlarge this little Work in embryo, under the same title that it made its first appearance, with some useful Additions, and with a new contrived Map of the country, that the reader may the better comprehend what he finds in this Sketch.