73 



exist letters patent of Louis the Debonaire in 834, and a bull 

 of Gregory IV. in 835, which confers on the church of Ham- 

 burg, among other privileges, that of converting the heathen in 

 Iceland and in Greenland. 



The new settlers in Greenland had then- bishops from Eu- 

 rope, and continued their intercourse with the parent state of 

 Norway till the year 1418. The colony paid to the pope an 

 annual tribute of 2600 pounds weight of walrus' teeth, as tithe 

 and Peter's pence. The dreadful pestilence, called the black 

 death, which in the middle of the fourteenth century depopu- 

 lated all Europe, extended its ravages to Greenland. The colony 

 was, from this and the increased severity of the climate, en- 

 feebled, and soon after disappeared from history. 



There was a country called Vinland within a few days' sail of 

 Greenland, watered with rivers yielding abundance of fine 

 salmon, on the banks of which were trees loaded with agreeable 

 fruits, the temperature delicious, and the soil very fertile. 

 Amongst the fruits were found grapes, which was the cause of 

 their naming it the land of wine. 



It is impossible to shake the authenticity of the above circum- 

 stantial accounts of the Northmen ; and it is likewise difficult to 

 acknowledge their genuine character without admitting at the 

 same time that Vinland was in Newfoundland. Wine was made 

 from grapes which grew formerly in the open fields of England 

 and the north of France, and there are ample proofs of a similar 

 reduction of mean temperature in other parts of the continents 

 of Europe and in North America. It is in the northern regions 

 that we find relics of man and his works, and probably the 

 greater part have disappeared, owing to the rapid destruction 

 and oxidation of the land at this pole. 



According to a recent account, several subterranean stone laby- 

 rinths have been discovered in Lapland, Nova Zembla, and some 

 of the islands lying near the coasts of Finland_, particularly in 

 Wiez, which is all desert, called by the natives Babylons*. 

 Arabian coins are found in many parts of Russia, along the 

 Volga, and northward even as far as the White Sea, all of which 

 are of a date anterior to 1010 1- 



* Athenseum, part 190. 



f Lardner's Cyclopaedia, Maritime Discovery, vol. i. p. 169. 



