232 COSMOS. 



cipal settLment of the Northmen. The colonists had oitt^i- 

 to contend with a very warhke race of Esquimaux, who theii 

 extended further to the south under the name of the Skrahn- 

 ger. The first Bishop of Greenland, Eric Upsi, an Icelander, 

 undertook, m 1121, a Christian mission to Vinland ; and the 

 name of the colonized country has even heen discovered in old 

 national songs of the inhabitants of the Faroe Islands.* 



The activity and bold spirit of enterprise manifested by the 

 Greenland and Icelandic adventurers are proved by the cir- 

 cumstance that after they had established settlements south 

 of 41° 30' north latitude, they erected three boundary pillars 

 on the eastern shores of Baffin's Bay, at the latitude of 72° 

 55', on one of the Woman's Islands,! northwest of the present 

 most northern Danish colony of Upernavick. The Runic in- 

 scriptions, which were discovered in the autumn of the year 

 1824, contain, according to Rask and Finn Magnusen, the 

 date 1135. From this eastern coast of Baffin's Bay, more 

 than six hundred years before the bold expeditions of Parry 

 and Ross, the colonists very regularly visited Lancaster Sound 

 and a part of Barrow's Straits for the purpose of fishing. The 

 locality of the fishing ground is very deffiiitely described, and 

 Greenland priests, from the Bishopric of Gardar, conducted 

 the first voyage of discovery (1266). This northwestern sum- 

 mer station was called the Kroksfjardar Heath. Mention is 

 even made of the drift-wood (undoubtedly from Siberia) col- 

 lected there, and of the abundance of whales, seals, walruses, 

 and sea bears. $ 



degree of latitude correspouds to a decrease in the mean annual tem 

 perature of ahnost 3°. 6, while, according to my researches, on the sys- 

 tem of isothermal lines in Europe, the same decrease of temperature 

 scarcely amounts to half a degree for the same interval. (Asie Ccntralt 

 X. iii.. p. 227.) 



* See Carmen Fceroicum iti quo Vinlajidirz mentio fit. (Rafu, Anti 

 quit. Amer.,-^. 320-332.) 



t The Runic stone was placed on the highest point of the island o( 

 Kingiktorsoak " on the Saturday before the day of victory," i. e., before 

 thelilst of April, a great heathen festival of the ancient Scandinavians, 

 which, at their conversion to Christianity, was changed into a Christian 

 festival. (Rafu, Antiquit. Amer., p. 347-35.5.) On the doubts which 

 Brynjulfsen, JMohnike, and Klaproth express respecting the Runic num 

 bers, see my Ex amen Crit., t. ii., p. 97-101 ; yet, from other indications, 

 Brynjulfsen and Graah are led to regard the important monument on 

 the Woman's Islands (as well as the Runic inscriptions found at Igalik- 

 ko and Egegeit, lat. G0° 51' and GO^ 0', and the ruins of buildings near 

 Upernavik, lat, 72° 50') as belonging undoubtedly to the eleventh and 

 twelfth centuries. 



t Rafn, Ajidjiiit. Amer., p. 20, 274, and 415-41 S (Wilhelmi, Ueber Is! 



