﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA — BABCOCK 33 



there. For one Gunnbiorn soon after the beginning of settlements in 

 Iceland had found the rocky islets in the Greenland sea which long 

 bore his name; 1 and had passed beyond them to full sight of a 

 forbidding shore, on which he remained for a season. His account 

 had not tempted any one thither in later years. That nameless region 

 called for a man like Eric to open it, hardly for any other — a man 

 homeless and endangered but inherently hopeful, at once astute and 

 daring, and far from unbef riended. 



Those who still stood by him helped Eric to a ship, which lay 

 hidden in quiet places till he could slip away with a volunteer crew, 

 quite suddenly, into the unknown. 



For three years he was lost to the world, 2 three years devoted to 

 an exploration so careful and thorough that, according to Rink's 

 Danish Greenland (a " fascinating book" as Fiske has rightly called 

 it) hardly anything has remained for later search unless in the 

 absolutely ice-clad interior, the remote north or the nearly inaccessible 

 east. Nansen also — and there can be no better authority — ranks his 

 achievements as an explorer among the very greatest. Passing 

 through the narrow water gates — hidden altogether from the eyes of 

 Davis late in the sixteenth century — which break at intervals the 

 Coast of Desolation, he followed deep and branching fiords into 

 an interrupted belt of verdure and flowers, of low trees and shrubs 

 and plentiful berries, of tumbling cascades and far off glacier- 

 glimpses ; and this he called Greenland, choosing it for the heart of 

 his main settlement. Another area, somewhat like it, about two hun- 

 dred and fifty miles up the shore, was penetrated and chosen, too, 

 becoming the site of the lesser western settlement. The subsequent 

 centuries have disclosed no improvement upon these, and he seems 

 to have acquainted himself equally with the less valuable or utterly 

 savage regions which he passed by. There is no doubt that he reached 

 Davis Strait, very likely passing up beyond Disco, soon afterward 

 well known as Bear Island (Biarney). He may well have stood out 

 far enough from shore to see the other side. When the work was 



: For their disappearance see note on Ruysch's (1507) map of the world, 

 Lelewel's Atlas. Also Voyages of the Cabots and Cortereals by H. P. Biggar, 

 p. 60; also Major's Works; but Nansen dissents, believing they were on the 

 Greenland coast. 



2 "This happened five hundred years before the rediscovery of America by 

 Columbus and Cabot. I think this Norse exploration of Greenland a thousand 

 years ago equals any modern polar exploration both as regards importance and 

 as regards the way in which it was carried out." Nansen in Scribner's Mag., 

 Mar. 191 2. Article dated Nov. 26, 191 1. 



