In Greenland, all this is reversed. Young girls have nothing to do but dance and sing, and fetch water, and look to their baby brothers and sisters; but when they marry, they become the slaves of an absolute master, for whom they are obliged to toil and drudge, with frequent beatings; and if left in widowhood with little children, they are generally in extreme poverty, with none to hunt or fish for them. For these reasons, the Greenland women are averse to marriage. When a girl sees the relations of a young man at her father’s house, and hears them praise his dexterity in catching seals, she begins to suspect that her parents are about to sell her; and she often runs away and hides in the mountains, until the women search for her, and drag her home. On such occasions, she will remain silent and dejected for several days, refusing to be comforted. Sometimes they make a solemn vow that they will never marry, and shave their heads in sign of their determination. Their hair is long, straight and black. The women wear it in a roll on the top of the head, adorned with some gay bandage of beads, or hanging in two long braids each side of the forehead. It is never cut off, except to avoid marriage, or in token of deep mourning, or as a punishment. Mothers tattoo the faces of their daughters, by drawing threads filled with soot under the skin. They are generally short in stature, with shoulders made very broad by the constant habit of carrying burdens. Their complexion is tawny, and their eyes small and sunken. Some of the old women are said to be hideously ugly; their eyes being inflamed by the glittering of the sun on fields of ice, and their teeth blackened by the constant use of tobacco. Some of the inhabitants of these northern regions have their garments made wide enough in the back to support an infant, which is kept from falling by means of a girdle round the mother’s waist; in other places, the babe sits behind her neck, on a broad strap fastened round her forehead. Some of the children, it is said, are rather comely by nature, but, from being laid carelessly in the bottom of boats, they look very much like wild, neglected little animals. Polygamy is not common, but is by no means discreditable. The first wife, if she have children, is considered the head of the family. When she dies, the junior wife takes her place, and is generally very kind to the motherless little ones. When a man wishes to obtain a wife, he adorns himself, his children, his house, his boats, and his darts, in the finest manner he can, in order to render himself an object of attraction. Widowers seldom marry under a year, unless they have very small children, with no one to nurse them. When a man wishes for divorce, he leaves the house, apparently in anger, and does not return for several days; the wife understands his meaning, packs up her clothes, and removes to her friends.