i899-'oo Transactions it 



Eric Raude, (Red Eric), an Icelander, had heard by the fire- 

 sides of his father and neighbours the story of Gunnbjorn's ad- 

 ventures and when he was convicted of manslaughter before the 

 Ihornaes Tin^ or Judicial assembly, of Iceland and sentenced to 

 banishment for a term of years he bethought him of the story and 

 resolved to pass the time of his sentence in exploring the un- 

 known land. He doubled the cape, called by Gunnbjorn Hard- 

 saerk (known to modern whalers as Cape Farewell) and no years 

 after Gunnbjorn's unwilling voyage gave the land the curious 

 name of Greenland, or its equivalent in his native tongue. When 

 Eric, the red-headed son of a viking, called the country Green- 

 land he was not afflicted with colour-blindness, nor did he see it 

 through green spectacles, nor was he in a sarcastic mood as sail- 

 ors are wont to be when disappointed. 



He so named the fiord into which he had penetrated, because 

 the land around it was clad in living green, the season being the 

 prime of summer time and the grass wearing its liveliest emerald 

 suit. Purchas in "his Pilgrimage" says "Greenland is a place 

 in nature nothing like unto the name ; for certainly there is no 

 place in the world yet known and discovered that is less green 

 than it. " 



Sir John Ross says of an island off the Greenland Coast still 

 farther north than Eric's fiord : " The island was a far finer ob- 

 ject than our former experience of it at an earlier, and perhaps in 

 a worse, season, had given us reason to expect on this icy coast 

 and reminded us in a lively manner of the far fairer land (Eng- 

 land) which we had quitted but a month before and of the sum- 

 mer which we believed we had left behind. Every practicable 

 part of the surface, even the smallest spot which was not a pure, 

 precipice, or a sea rock, was covered with verdure, while a profu- 

 sion of wild plants, now in full and luxuriant blossom, rendered 

 that a summer garden, which we expected to find (what we had 

 often done before) a chaos of rugged rocks and cold snow. We 

 therefore no longer wondered at those who had given the name 

 of Greenland to a country which others, as well as ourselves, had 

 long thought to have been ridiculed by such g. denomination. It 

 - was in truth a Grcenla?id. " , 



You see it is the old story of the dispute about the color of 

 the chamelion and about the gold and silver shield. 



