DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND. 209 



navigation is toM'iirds the west. Halfway between Green- 

 land and Iceland is Gundebiurne Skecr : such was formerly 

 the route before the ice came from the north and rendered 

 this navigation perilous. It then writes, but in a separate 

 article, that northwards from Languencs, the most north- 

 ern extremity of Iceland, there are eighteen leagues to Ostre- 

 horn, which means eastern horn. From Ostrehorn to Hualls- 

 bredde the voyage takes tAvo days and nights. 



I do not pretend to say that any one undertakes the 

 voyage to Greenland by this route, but all that I could 

 understand is, that the navigation of this sea has always been 

 difficult and perilous. You may have noticed the same thing 

 from what I told you of the return of Leiffe into Greenland 

 to his father, Eric the Red, and from the shipwreck which 

 befcl the bishop Arnaud, and fi-om what I have just told you 

 of the mariners of Greenland. 



There is also in the same Icelandic Chronicle a chapter 

 headed, Trcmscrihed from an old hook, entitled, Specidum 

 Regale, touclnng the ajfairs of Greenland. The text of 

 it is much more clear than that of the former. Some 

 time ago, it states, there were seen in the sea of Greenland 

 three sea monsters, of enormous size. The first, which 

 the Norwegians saw from the waist upwards out of the 

 water, they called haffstramh : it was like a man about the 

 neck, head, face, nose, and mouth, with the exception of the 

 head being very much elevated and pointed towards the top. 

 Its shoulders were broad, and at their extremity were two 

 stumps of arms without hands. The body was slender 

 below, but they have never been able to sec its form 

 lower than the waist. Its look was chilling. There were 

 heavy storms each time that this phantom appeared on the 

 water. The second monster has been called marguguer. 

 It was formed down to the waist like a woman. It had large 

 breasts, dishevelled hair, and huge hands at the end of the 

 stumps of the arms, Avith long fingers, webbed like the feet 



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