IN NORTHERN MISTS 



Damiam de Goes, in his " Chronica do Felicissimo Rei dom 

 Emanuel" [Lisbon, 1566], has a more detailed account of Gas- 

 par Cortereal's voyage of 1500, and of the land he visited. He 

 says: 



"He sailed from the port of Lisbon at the beginning of summer, 1500. On 

 this voyage he discovered in a northerly direction a land which was very cold, 

 and with great forests, as all those [countries] are that lie in that quarter. He 

 gave it the name of Terra verde [i.e., green land]. The people are very bar- 

 baric and wild, almost like those of Sancta Cruz [i.e., Brazil], except that they 

 are at first white, but become so weather-beaten from the cold that they lose 

 their whiteness with age and become almost dark brown. They are of middle 

 height, very active, and great archers, using sticks hardened in the fire for 

 throwing-spears, with which they make as good casts as though they had 

 points of good steel. They clothe themselves in the skins of beasts, of which 

 there is abundance in that country. They live in caves, and in huts, and they 

 have no laws. They have great belief in omens; they have marriage, and are 

 very jealous of their wives, in which they resemble the Lapps, who also live in 

 the north from 70° to 85°. . . . After he [Caspar Cortereal] had discovered 

 this land, and sailed along a great part of its coast, he returned to this king- 

 dom. As he greatly desired to discover more of this province, and to become 

 better acquainted with its advantages, he set out again immediately in the year 

 1501, on May 15, from Lisbon; but it is not known what happened to him on 

 this voyage, for he was never seen again, nor did there come any news of him." 

 [Cf. Harrisse, 1883, p. 233.] 



The last statement, that Cortereal disappeared without any 

 more being heard of him, shows that De Goes was not well in- 

 formed, in spite of his being chief custodian (Guarda m'or) of 

 the Torre do Tombo where the State archives were kept at Lis- 

 bon. His whole account may therefore be of doubtful value as 

 a historical document. His description of the newly discovered 

 land and of the inhabitants may be derived from other state- 

 ments, or from literary sources, and is of the same kind as we 

 often meet with in accounts of natives in the authorities of that 

 time. It appears that the cold country, Terra verde, with great 

 forests and wild, barbaric people, must be the Greenland (Grono- 

 londes) that is referred to in the anonymous letter of about 1450 

 to Pope Nicholas V.^ Most of what is said about these natives 



1 That the Eskimo lived in caves in the mountains or underground was a not 

 uncommon idea even in later times; see, for instance, Wilhelmi: Island, Hvitra- 

 mannaland, Gronland, und Finland, 1842, p. 172. 

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