222 DESCRIPTION or GREENLAND. 



design against him. The master allowed himself to be per- 

 suaded by the importunity of the servant ; but the man had 

 hardly set foot on the land when in a moment he was seized, 

 killed, and torn in pieces by the savages, who retired from 

 the port after this and hid themselves from the cannon of the 

 Danes. The knives and swords of these savages were made 

 of horn or teeth of those fish which they call unicorns, 

 ground down and sharpened with stones ; they pierce quite 

 as well as if they were made of iron and steel. 



Gotske Lindcnau, seeing that he could do nothing in this 

 country, set sail for Denmark. One of his Greenland pri- 

 soners was so wretched at the thought of leaving his covm- 

 try, that in despair he threw himself into the sea and was 

 drowned. In returning, the Danes found the vessel which 

 had strayed on their outward passage ; but they Avere only 

 five days together, for a tempest wdiich rose scattered all 

 five, and they did not meet again for a month after the 

 storm was over. They arrived at Copenhagen, after much 

 trouble and peril, the 5th of the following October. 



The king of Denmark undertook the third and last voyage 

 which he had caused to be made to Greenland, with two 

 large vessels, under the command of a captain of the country 

 of Hoi stein, named Karsten Richkardtsen, to whom he gave 

 Norwegian and Icelandic sailors to guide and pilot him. The 

 chronicle says, that the captain left the Sound on the loth of 

 May, but does not mention the year; nor have I ever been able 

 to learn it. On the eighth of the following June he discovered 

 the summits of the mountains of Greenland, but could not 

 land on account of the ice which was all round it, and which 

 (extended some distance into the sea. Upon this ice were also 

 large heaps of ice, Avhich resembled huge rocks ; and t)ie 

 chronicler remarks in this place, that there are years when 

 the ice does not melt even in summer. The Danish captain 

 was obliged to return without effecting anything, and he was 

 necessitated to do so because his second \esscl was separated 



