NOTES. 



Ixxiii 



and 60 0', and the ruins of buildings at Upernaviclc, lat. 72 50', as belonging 

 decidedly to the llth and 12th centuries. 



t 368 ) p. 235. Rafn, Antiquit. Amer. p. 20, 274, and 415 418 (Wilhelmi 

 iiber Island, Hvitramannaland, Greenland, and Vinland, S. 117 121). Ac- 

 cording to a very ancient Saga, the most northern part of the east coast of 

 Greenland was also visited in 1194, under the name of Svalbard, at a part 

 which corresponds to Scoresby's land, near the point where my friend, 

 then Captain Sabine, made his pendulum observations, and where I possess a 

 very dreary cape, in 73 16' (Rafn, Antiquit. Amer. p. 303, and Aper9U de 

 1'ancicnne Geographic des Regions arctiques de I'Ame'rique, 1847, p. 6.) 



( 3G9 ) p. 235. Wilhelmi, work above quoted, S. 226 ; Rafu, Antiquit. Amer. 

 p. 264 and 453. The settlements on the west coast of Greenland, which, 

 until the middle of the 14th century, were in a very nourishing condition, 

 underwent a gradual decay, from the ruinous operation of commercial mono- 

 poly, from the attacks of Esquimaux (Skralinger), the black death which, 

 according to Hecker, desolated the North during the years 1347 to 1351, and 

 the invasion of a hostile fleet from some unknown quarter. At the present 

 time, credit is no longer given to the meteorological myth of a sudden altera- 

 tion of climate, and of the formation of an icy barrier, which had for its imme- 

 diate consequence the entire separation of the colonies established in Green- 

 land from their mother country. As these colonies were only on the more 

 temperate district of the west coast of Greenland, it cannot be true that a 

 bishop of Skalholt, in 1540, saw, on the east coast of Greenland, beyond the 

 icy barrier, " shepherds feeding their flocks." The accumulation of masses 

 of ice on the east coast opposite to Iceland depends on the configuration of 

 the land, the neighbourhood of a chain of mountains having glaciers and 

 running parallel to the line of coast, and on the direction of marine currents. 

 This state of things did not take its origin from the close of the 14th or the 

 beginning of the 15th centuries. As Sir John Barrow has very justly shewn, 

 it has been subject to many accidental alterations, particularly in the years 

 1815 1817. (See Barrow, Voyages of Discovery within the Arctic Regions, 

 1846, p. 2 6). Pope Nicholas V. named a bishop for Greenland as late as 

 1448. 



t 370 ) p. 236. The principal sources of information are the historic narra- 

 tions of Eric the Red, Thorfinn Karlsefne, and Snorre Thorbrandsson, pro- 

 bably committed to writing as early as the 12th century in Greenland itself, 

 and partly by descendants of settlers born in Vinland (Rafn, Antiquit. Amer. 

 p. vii. xiv. and xvi.) The care with which genealogical tables were kept was 



