114 J. C. SCHULTZ ON THE 



straits of Belle-Isle, and in the third summer, to quote an early narrator, "They explored 

 the island, but as their vessel unfortunately bulged against a headland, they were obliged to 

 spend the greater part of the season in repairing her. The old keel being useless, they 

 erected it as a monument on the top of the cape, to which they gave the name of 

 ' Kiaelarnes.' " 



Having refitted the ship, they again reconnoitered the east side of the country, where 

 they fell in with thi-ee small boats covered with skins, with three men in each. These they 

 seized, with the exception of one man, who escaped, and killed them in mere wantonness. 

 Shortly after they wx're attacked by a multitude of the same savages in their lioats, but they 

 were so well screened from the shower of Eskimo arrows by the lioards which guarded the 

 ship's sides, and defeiuled themselves with such vigour that after an hour's skirmish they 

 compelled their assailants to seek safety in flight and unjustlj' enough after so arduous a 

 contest bestowed upon these Indians the contemptuous appellation " Skraelings ; " Thorwald 

 alone, of all the crew, paid the forfeit of his barbarity with his life, having received a wound 

 from an arrow in the skirmish from which he soon died. 



It would seem from this narrative that the first Skraelings seen by Europeans were met 

 on the northeastern coast of Xowfoundland or the southeastern coast of Labrador in the 

 earliest years of the eleventh century, and their own record of the occurrence reflects little 

 credit on the European barbarians who were the victors and murderers in these first encoun- 

 ters between the people of the east and west. 



Xo satisfactory evidence is to be found that Greenland at this time was inhabited, save 

 l)y the Norwegian and Icelandic colonists who settled upon its east and west coast ; indeed 

 the most ancient Icelandic writers, of whom Saemund Frede, Ari;is Polihistor, Snorro 

 Sturlesen and others, who wrote as early as the twelfth century, relate that, although pieces 

 ofbroken oars were sometimes found on the strand, no human beings were ever seen, either 

 on the east or west coasts. 



If the treatment accorded by Thorwald to the Skraelings was a fair example of that 

 which was accorded them when afterwards met with by other adventurers on the Atlantic 

 and St. Lawrence coasts of Labrador, we may well surmise that the name and ill-fame of 

 the eastern intruders would be carried from the seal tents of the Labrador coast to the snow 

 houses of their countrymen on the fiir-off northern coasts of islands to the westward of the 

 wide and treacherous sea, now known as Baflin's Ba}', and its inlet, Davis's Strait, and have 

 engendered that racial hostility which, aided by the plague or black death of Europe, was, 

 three centuries later to sweep away from Greenland their eastern enemies with a destruction 

 so complete as to leave no living man, and scarcely a monument of the occupation of the 

 colonizing race. 



From the date of the recolonization of Greenland we have a better knowledge of the 

 " Innuits" or Eskimo who then possessed the land, and who, on the whole, having forgotten 

 the old feud, or perhaps deemed it wiped out in blood, received their visitors in peace. 

 From the records of the factors of the royal Danish fur trade and the devout missionaries 

 who, led on first by the devoted Hans Egede, have, with their successors, the ^Moravian 

 brethren, spread the light of the gospel from the home of the Aurora to the Straits of Belle- 

 Isle, along the Greenland and Labrador coast, we learn much to dispel the prejudice against 

 the "Skraelings" (shrivelled chips of creatures) engendered by descrijitions of them written 

 over eight hundred years ago, and certainly the kindly savages whom Richardson, Parry 



