APPEARANCE OF THE SKHCELLINGS. 165 



the Eskimo. At this period (the eleventh century) they had pro- 

 bably spread themselves from Northern Siberia, across Behring 

 Strait, along the whole coast of Arctic America, until they were 

 stopped by the waves of the Atlantic. The hostility of the Red 

 Indians was an effectual barrier to their seeking a more genial home 

 to the south. They were not likely to wander towards the barren 

 and inhospitable north auy more than their descendants do to-day ; 

 and they had no inducement to trust themselves in their frail 

 hayaks, or umiaks, on the waves of the Atlantic. They assuredly 

 never crossed over to Greenland by navigating Davis Strait or 

 Baffin's Bay. This, as I believe, is the southern belt of Eskimo 

 migration ; but it is with the Greenland Eskimo that we have now 

 to do, who had had no communication with their southern brethren 

 since their ancestors hunted together on the frozen tundra of 

 Siberia, and who, after centuries of wanderings along wild Arctic 

 shores and in regions still unknown, first make their appearance in 

 Greenland, coming down from the north. 



Our last historical glimpse of the Norsemen of Greenland shows 

 tliem living in two districts, in villages along the shores, with 

 small herds of cattle finding pasturage round their houses, with 

 outlying colonies on the opposite. shores of America, and occasional 

 vessels trading with Iceland and Norway; but no grain would 

 ripen in their fields. They seem to have been a wild turbulent 

 race of hardy pirates, and their history, short as it is, is filled with 

 accounts of bloody feuds. All at once, in the middle of the four- 

 teenth century, a horde of Skroellings, resembling the small men of 

 Vinland and Markland, appeared on the extreme northern frontier 

 of the Norman settlements of Greenland, at a place called Kindel- 

 fjord., Eighteen Norsemen were killed in an encounter with 

 them ; the news of the invasion travelled south to the East Bygd ; 

 one Ivar Bardsen came to the rescue in 1349, and he found that all 

 the Norsemen of the West Bygd had disappeared, and that the 

 Skroellings were in possession. Here the record abruptly ceases, 

 and we hear nothing more of Greenland until the time of the Eliza- 

 bethan navigators, and nothing authentic of either Norsemen or 

 Skroellings until the mission of Hans Egede, in the middle of the 

 last century. 



When the curtain rises again all traces of the Norsemen have 

 disappeared save a few Bunic inscriptions, extending as far north 



1 Crantz, i. p. 'A r >8, quoting i'roin La Peyrere, who repeats from Wormius. 

 Alter a careful consideration of the evidence, Mr. Major baa concluded that 

 Kindelfjord is the inlet where the present Danish settlement of Omenali is 

 situated, north of the island of Disco. 



N 2 



