INTRODUCTION. 11 



Nicholas and Anthony Zeni : their discovery is dated in 

 1380. This island. West Friesland, was laid do^\Ti in the 

 fifty-eighth degree, between Iceland and Greenland. It is 

 said to have been touched at by Frobisher, in one of his 

 voyages in search of gold in Greenland. This spot is now 

 marked on the charts as occupying an extensive and 

 dangerous tract of ocean, and is named the Sunken Land 

 of Buss. Mariners are studiously careful to avoid it. It is 

 in tempestuous weather covered by a high and terrible sea. 

 When humane reflection comes to contemplate this aAvful 

 event, considerations of the most painful description must 

 arise. 



The darkness in which the northern history involves the 

 fate of this island is peculiarly uninviting to accurate re- 

 search. That there has been a West Friesland is by no 

 means doubtful ; and that such a country was not the Green- 

 land of late note, is equally certain. The population in the 

 hundred towns of this island, placed so far north as repre- 

 sented, and so far to the southward of Iceland, was well worthy 

 of the notice of the historians of the time. The mind, how- 

 ever rude, in viewing the Avaves that still tower over its waste, 

 must sicken at the contemplation. The site can only come 

 within the casual glance of the wary mariner ; and in the 

 latitude of the Sunken Land such a man is guided by his 

 fears to avoid the dangerous spot. Valleys of dreadful 

 soundings, and peaks of tremendous and destructive con- 



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