EARLY GREENLAND COLONISATION. 117 



some part of the coast of Newfoundland, in all probability. The intercourse between 

 Greenland and America was kept up to the fourteenth century, principally for the purpose 

 of obtaining wood, but no colony was formed. Meantime the Greenland colonies grew 

 and flourished. Sixteen churches were erected, and nearly three hundred hamlets formed 

 on the east and west sides. That on the west had increased till it numbered four parishes, 

 containing one hundred villages, but being engaged in perpetual hostility with the native 

 Esquimaux, then known as Skroelings, the colony was ultimately destroyed. In 1721, 

 when the excellent missionary, Hans Egede, visited that country, on its being re-colonised 

 by the Greenland Company, the ruins of their edifices were still to be found. The fate 

 of the eastern colony was, if possible, still more deplorable. It had, for a time, a greater 

 population than that of the western side. " A succession of sixteen bishops is recorded 

 in the Iceland annals/' says Barrow, " but when the seventeenth was proceeding from 

 Norway, in 1406, to take possession of his see, a stream of ice had fixed itself to the 

 coast, and rendered it completely inaccessible; and from that period to the present time 

 no intercourse whatever has been had with the unfortunate colonists." It is related in 

 the " History of Greenland " by Thormoder Torfager, that Amand, Bishop of Skalholt, in 

 Iceland, in returning to Norway from that island, about the middle of the sixteenth 

 century, was driven by a storm near to the east coast of Greenland, and got so close that 

 the inhabitants could be seen driving their cattle, but they did not attempt to land. 

 The fate of the East Greenland colony has been the cause of much discussion, some con- 

 tending that it never was on the eastern side, but on the western ; but that there were 

 two distinct colonies cannot be doubted. A field of ice has apparently blocked the eastern 

 coast for centuries, and all attempts made to penetrate it have failed, as we shall see in 

 the progress of our narrative. Up to the end of the last century, the Esquimaux of the 

 western side spoke of a foreign race, taller than themselves, and of whom they were 

 greatly afraid, regarding them as cannibals and as their natural enemies. When they 

 had met, the former had always fled, the latter shooting after them with arrows. Crantz, 

 a great authority on Greenland, says : " If this report can be depended upon, we might sup- 

 pose that these men were descended from the old Norwegians, had sheltered themselves from 

 the savages in the mountains, lived in enmity to them out of resentment for the destruction 

 of their ancestors, pillaged them in the spring when sustenance failed them, and were looked 

 upon by the savages as man-eaters, and fabulously represented through excess of fear." 



The above introduction to our subject will pave the way for the period when the 

 history of Arctic and northern voyages becomes more and more definite. We begin with 

 those of the Zeni brothers, from which the mists of obscurity and error have only recently 

 been cleared, through the patient researches of a most careful student and geographer. 



The voyages of the Zeni have generally been either ignored or considered worse than 

 mythical. For some three centuries these noble Venetian adventurers have indeed been 

 subjected to an amount of contumely and abuse sufficient to have made them turn in 

 their graves. But a champion has arisen in the person of R. H. Major, Esq., F.S.A., 

 one of the secretaries of the Royal Geographical Society, who, clearing their narratives 

 from subsequent interpolations, has shown that their own voyages, and those of others 

 recorded by them were both genuine and important. Their history, in brief, is as follows : 



