2S4 On the Expeditions lo the North Folc. 



Higher up, nothing is to be seen but ice ; and ice so accumu- 

 lated and impenetrable, as !o repel the boldest pirates. The 

 current, whose continual fin< < tio'.i is snuth-WTst, tioiUs towards 

 this coa.vt, extending for ten degrees of latitude the sheets of ice 

 whirh coii;e from Spitzbergen. This has been the cas> for two 

 centuries ; and hence it is extremely proliable, that thif coast 

 was never accessible. It is not here that the ice has lately dis- 

 appeared ; it is higher north, where the ruins of the old Norman 

 hamlets and churches have been discovered. These ruins bear 

 traces of violent destruction by a hostile force. Perhaps, also, 

 the plague, which ravaged Europe in the fourteenth century, was 

 extended to Greenland. The commerce with this colouv having 

 become a droit of the queen of Norway, the monopoly acce- 

 lerated the decline of the establishment. But a bull of pope 

 Nicolas V. proves that the destruction of the colony was caused 

 by a foreign invasion; a fleet, nobody knows whence, attacked 

 and devastated the country; all was annihilated by fire aiid sword. 

 This fleet probably belonged to Prince Zichno or Sinclhir, lord 

 of the isles of the Orcades and of Fmlaiid, whose two brothers 

 Nicolo and Antonio Zeni decried the expedition as piratical. 



These explanations, which make the woix'ers of East Green- 

 land disappear, have not been received without examination, and 

 without opposition. In a memoir printed in the Danish lan- 

 f»uage, and which is deposited in the Royal Liljrarv at Paris, a 

 lieutenant of marine, M. de Wormskiold, attempts to prove that 

 old East Greenland must exist on the eastern coast between the 

 62d and 64th parallels of latitude. These arguments are taken 

 from the " Voyage of Danell," a book not deemed authentic. 



Denmark has left nothing untried to decide the problem. Many 

 attempts have been made by that power, both by sea and land. 

 In 17S8, Lieutenants Egede and Bothe sailed up the eastern 

 coast as far as 6■^ degrees parallel : the ice prevented them from 

 going further. The coast presented the most dismal prospect. 



Nothing discovered in modern times proves those changes in 

 the climates, those great phvsical catastrophes, with which some 

 A\Titers, full of imagination, have endeavoured to animate the 

 picture of the polar regions. 



The idea of being winter-bound in the midst of the glacial 

 regions, frightens the imaginations of th.ose who have read the 

 relations of Berendt and Heemskerk : but these two Dutch ma- 

 riners had foreseen, had prepared nothing ; shipwreck consigned 

 them, without defence, to the horrors of a polar winter. The 

 English navigators have calculated the dangers, and provided the 

 means for withstanding them ; they do not appear to doubt the 

 possibility of supporting the cold, even under the pole : — perhaps 

 liuture may furrish them with some facilities which they do not 



expect. 



