230 DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND. 



water to swiui to their country. It is very likely that they 

 were drowned on the way, for they must have been at too 

 great a distance from the shore. 



Thus far I have written all that I could learn of Old and 

 New Greenland. Of the Old, which the Norwegians inha- 

 bited, and of the New, which the Norwegian, Danish, and the 

 English discovered in seeking the Old. The passages across 

 from Iceland to the Old Greenland were probably blocked 

 up by the fall of ice, which the severe winters and the rough 

 north-east winds drove from the frozen sea and heaped up in 

 this channel ; it is also likely that the sailors, who could not 

 keep to the old route, were obliged to follow the one which 

 led them to Cape Farewell and Davis' Gulf, the shore of 

 which is opposite to the east, and is that which they call 

 New Greenland. Now it is possible that the ancient pas- 

 sages to Greenland from Iceland have been blocked up, 

 from the fact of the route having been lost ; and the 

 Icelandic Chronicle, of which I have spoken to you before, 

 furnishes us with a more certain proof in the chapter on this 

 navigation, where it is stated that halfway between Green- 

 land and Iceland is Gondebiurne Skeer, which is a collection 

 of little rocks and islets scattered in this sea and infested 

 with bears, where the progress of the ice has probably been 

 stopped, and it has been so strongly bound together that the 

 sun, not being able to melt it, it has become like a petrifaction ; 

 so that this road being closed, the communication they had 

 with Greenland was also broken off ; and thus no news what- 

 ever could be had of them, neither could they hear what had 

 become of the poor Norwegians who inhabited it. It would 

 seem that the same black pestilence which ravaged the people 

 of the north, about the year 1848, and which was doubtless 

 carried from Norway, destroyed them like the others. I 

 would willingly believe that Gotske Lindcnau, who kept, as 

 I have told you before, the route of the north-west in his 

 first voyage, had reached Old Greenland, or very nearly 



