GREENLAND COLONISED 3 



came the voyage of Leif Ericson, who, on his way 

 down the mainland, landing again and again, gave the 

 names to Helluland, Markland, Vinland in short, 

 the Viking discovery of the New World. 



Greenland, like the eastern coast of the continent, 

 was duly colonised, its two chief settlements being one 

 just round Cape Farewell, the other further north on 

 the same coast. In those days the island, or chain of 

 islands beneath an ice-cap, as many think it is, would 

 appear to have had a milder climate than it has 

 now. The colonies throve, their population becoming 

 numerous enough to require a series of seventeen 

 bishops, the last one dying about 1540, to superintend 

 their spiritual welfare. But the Eskimos, in their 

 migration from Asia across the Arctic islands, arrived 

 in the country before the middle of the fourteenth 

 century and gradually drove the Norsemen down- 

 wards, the northern colony coming to an end in 1342 

 owing to the enemy attacking during a visitation of 

 the Black Death. 



Meanwhile Iceland, which touches the Arctic Circle 

 in its northernmost point, and extends but half as far 

 south of it as Greenland, increased in prosperity as a 

 sort of aristocratic republic, and produced more ver- 

 nacular literature than any country in Europe, in which, 

 as might be expected, the story of Greenland and the 

 American colonies was kept so well to the fore that 

 it became as familiar among the people as a nursery 

 tale. Thither, from Bristol, in February, 1477, went 

 Columbus ; and thence it was he returned to seek a 

 patron for his western voyage across the Atlantic. 



The first voyage of Columbus in 1492 gave a great 



