CHAPTER I 
Though Greenland bea Country of a vast extent, yet it affords 
but a narrow field for any observation or remarks of conse- 
quence; there being no strong or well-built towns to meet 
with; no well-ordered Polity or Civil Government; no fine 
Arts and Sciences, or the like; but only a number of mean, 
wretched, and ignorant Gentiles, who live and improve the 
land according to their low capacity. |§ HANS EGEDE, 1741. 
The colonisation of Greenland by Eric the Red; its re-colonisation 
by Hans Egede in 1721. From Copenhagen to Disko Island in 
192. The Danish Arctic Station. The last resting-place of the ‘ Fox.’ 
N the latter part of the tenth century there lived 
in Iceland a ‘courageous, indomitable, and 
quarrelsome man’ called Eric the Red, who had 
come there as a child from Norway with his out- 
lawed father. Having in his turn been declared an 
outlaw, Eric about the year 983 equipped a ship 
and set sail for a land which had recently been 
discovered by one Gunbjérn to the west of Iceland. 
After sighting the south-east coast of the newly- 
discovered country he rounded the southern head- 
land, christened Cape Farewell some centuries 
later by John Davis, and landed on the south- 
west coast. Eric soon returned to Iceland and, 
believing that a ‘comely’ name would induce 
others to throw in their lot with him, he called the 
country Greenland. The result was, thirty-five ships 
left Iceland and fourteen of them reached their 
destination. 
The wooden shells of old Scandinavian ships 
discovered in modern times enable us more 
8.8. Ge t 
