GREENLAND. 



555 



one occupied the eastern, the other the western 

 coast. Their intercourse was carried on by sea, the 

 mountains rendering any communication by land im- 

 possible. A Runic stone found in Greenland in 1824 

 (now in the museum of northern antiquities at Copen- 

 riagen) proves the early discovery of Greenland from 

 Scandinavia. The western colony, after numerous 

 vicissitudes, still exists. The population in the 

 southern part to the river Frith (68), amounted in 

 1811 13, to 3583: northern Greenland contained 

 only 3000 natives. From 67 to 69, the country is 

 uninhabited. The fate of the eastern colony, which 

 in 1406 consisted of 190 villages, and had a bishop, 

 twelve parishes and two monasteries, is unknown. 

 Up to that time sixteen bishops had been sent from 

 Norway in regular succession ; the seventeenth was 

 prevented by the ice from reaching the land. Danish 

 sailors, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, 

 attempted without success, to land on the eastern 

 coast. Attempts made in 1786 and 1829, by the 

 command of the Danish government, failed. This 

 lost East Greenland, Von Egger, in his Prize 

 Essay (1794), maintains, is the country now called 

 Julianenshaab, on the western coast : but a manu- 

 script now in the library at Dresden, maintains that 

 the old settlement of Osterbygde was actually on 

 the eastern coast of Greenland. A traveller of the 

 fourteenth century, Nicolas Zeno, describes Green- 

 land as it existed in his time. In 1818, Britain sent 

 an expedition to the Polar sea, because the ice at 

 the north pole was said to have decreased, and a 

 north-west passage was believed practicable; the 

 ships returned, however, without accomplishing any 

 thing. Captain Scoresby found the eastern coast 

 free from ice in 1822 ; he sailed along it from 75 

 to 69, and examined it with care (see his Journal of 

 a P'oyagc to the Northern ff hale-Fishery , &c., 1822). 

 To this traveller we are indebted for the latest and 

 most correct accounts of East Greenland, which re- 

 fute Egger's opinions. He found fields producing 

 luxuriant grass, but no inhabitants. He met, how- 

 ever, with some houses, containing household uten- 

 sils and hunting apparatus, and a wooden coffin. 

 Captain Sabine describes the eastern coast of Green- 

 land (see his Experiments to determine the Figure of 

 the Earth,&c.), from 72 to 76 N. latitude. He also 

 found it impossible, on account of the permanent 

 mass of ice, to approach the eastern coast north of 

 74 ; his examinations proved that there was no cur- 

 rent which carries the ice from those coasts towards 

 the south. The western coast was also cut off, in 

 the middle of the fourteenth century, from its usual 

 intercourse with Norway and Iceland, by a dreadful 

 plague, called the black death. In the reign of queen 

 Elizabeth, Frobisher and Davis again discovered this 

 coast ot Greenland. From that time, nothing was 

 done to explore this country, until the Danish go- 

 vernment, in 1721, assisted a clergyman, Hans 

 Egede, with two ships, to elVect a landing in 64 5', 

 and establish the first European settlement, Good 

 Hope (Godhaab) , on the river Baal. Egede found 

 the country inhabited by a race of people which had 

 probably spread from the west over Davis's straits, 

 and which resembled the Esquimaux of Labrador in 

 their language and customs. In 1733, the Moravian 

 Brothers were induced by count Zinzendorf to at- 

 tempt the establishment of settlements and missions 

 on these inhospitable shores. There are now on the 

 western coast of Greenland twenty settlements, of 

 which the most southerly, Lichtenau, is situated in 

 60 34' N. latitude. Near it is the second settle- 

 ment, Juliana's Hope (Julianenshaab) : in the vici- 

 nity, the ruins of an old Icelandic and Norwegian 

 church are still visible. Farther to the north lie 

 Frederic's Hope, Liclilenfels, Good Hope, New 



Herrnhut, Zuckerhut, Holsteinburg, Egedesminde, 

 Christian's Hope, Jacobshaven, Omenack, and Up- 

 pernamick, in 72 32' N. latitude, the most northern 

 settlement, now occupied only by Greenlanders. 

 The governor of South Greenland has his seat in 

 Good Hope, and the governor of North Greenland is 

 stationed at Guthaven, on the island of Disco, in 70 

 N. latitude. There are five Protestant churches on 

 the coast, in which the gospel is preached in the 

 Danish and Greenlandish dialects. The Moravian 

 Brothers have three houses of public worship in Lich- 

 tenau, Lichtenfels, and New Herrnhut. 



The natives of Greenland, called by the oldest 

 Icelandish and Norwegian authors, Skrellings, belong 

 to the Esquimaux family, which is spread over all the 

 northern part of America, to the western coast. 

 They are remarkable for their diminutive stature ; 

 their hair is dark, eyes black, heads disproportion- 

 ately large, legs thin, and complexion a brownish 

 yellow, approaching to olive green. This, however, 

 is partly owing to their filthy manner of living, and 

 partly to their food and occupations, as they are con- 

 stantly covered with blubber and train oil. The 

 women, being employed, from early youth, in carry- 

 ing heavy loads, are so broad shouldered, as to lose 

 all feminine appearance. Their dress contributes to 

 this efiect ; they wear the skins of seals and reindeer. 

 The short coats, the trowsers, and boots of both 

 sexes, are all made of the same material In ex- 

 tremely cold weather, they wear a shirt made of the 

 skins of birds, particularly those of the sea-raven, the 

 eider duck, &c. In winter, they live in houses of 

 stone, witli walls two feet in thickness, covered with 

 brushwood and turf, and with an entrance so small, 

 that it can be passed only on the hands and feet. 

 Windows are seldom met with in these huts ; those 

 which they have are made of the intestines of whales 

 and seals. The height of the house never exceeds 

 six feet ; it is twelve feet wkle, and of about the same 

 length. It consists of one room only, with a raised 

 platform on one side, covered with seal-skin, whicli 

 serves the double purpose of a bed and a table. 

 Lamps, supplied with train-oil, are kept constantly 

 burning, as much for the sake of warmth as of light. 

 The smell from so many oil lamps, together with that 

 of the fish, raw skins, and greasy inhabitants, is hard- 

 ly to be endured by unaccustomed nostrils ; and the 

 filthy condition of the huts breeds immense quantities 

 of vermin. When the snow melts, whicli is gener- 

 ally the case in May, the roof of the house generally 

 sinks in, and the Greenlander then spreads a tent, 

 which is covered with seal skin, and surrounded with 

 a curtain of the intestines of whales ; the interior is 

 arranged like the winter establishment. Then: uten- 

 sils and tools are simple, but ingeniously contrived. 



