THE NORTHMEN. 23 



Eachusetts, naming the country Vinland, from the wild 

 vines which grew in the woods. These adventurers 

 made their way also to a high northern latitude, and set 

 up stones, carved with Runic inscriptions, with the date 

 1135, on Women's Islands in latitude 12 55' Baf- 

 fin's Bay, where they were discovered in 1824. The 

 colonists on the eastern coast of this great bay made 

 regular trips to Lancaster Sound and part of Barrow's 

 Strait, in pursuit offish "more than six centuries before 

 the adventurous voyage of Parry,' 3 and carried on a 

 trade with the settlers in Markland, as Nova Scotia was 

 then called. Their numbers must have been considera- 

 ble, for in Greenland there were three hundred home- 

 steads or villages, and twenty churches and convents. 

 They kept up intercourse with Europe until 1406, when 

 it was interrupted by extraordinary acci mulations of 

 ice upon their coasts ; and though the Danish govern- 

 ment has made repeated attempts to ascertain their fate, 

 it still remains in doubt ; the supposition is, that all 

 have perished from privation or violence of the natives, 

 Spitsbergen, too, contained numerous colonists : graves 

 are frequently met with on its shores ; in one place Cap- 

 tain Buchan saw several thousands, the corpses of some 

 of faem as fresh as when first interred, preserved by 

 the rigor of the climate. 



These early explorers were unable to take full advan- 

 tage of their American discoveries ; this was reserved 

 for a later period. " Intervening," observes Humboldt, 

 "between two different stages of cultivation, the 

 fifteenth century forms a transition epoch, belonging at 

 once to the middle ages and to the commencement of 

 modern times. It is the epoch of the greatest discov- 

 eries in geographical -space, comprising almost all de- 

 grees of latitude, and almost every gradation of elevation 

 of the earth's surface. To the inhabitants of Europe it 



