VOYAGE TO GREENLAND. 
149 
in a wooden fort, the different pieces of which they 
carried out in the transports. They met with 
boisterous weather, impenetrable fogs, and violent 
currents, which retarded their operations until the 
season was too far advanced. The Admiral there- 
fore determined to return with as much ore as he 
could procure : of this they obtained large quantities 
out of a new mine, to which they gave the name of 
the Countess of Sussex. They set sail in the be- 
ginning of September, and after a month’s stormy 
passage, arrived in England ; but this adventure 
was never after prosecuted. 
Thus stood the affairs of Greenland, when Hans 
Egede, minister of Vogen in Norway, prompted by a 
laudable zeal to promote the knowledge of Christ 
among the savage Greenlanders, made some pro- 
posals for renewing the intercourse between Den- 
mark and Norway, and Greenland, which had been 
discontinued for many centuries. Most of the 
friends and acquaintances of this worthy divine, 
when they heard of his project, looked upon it as 
a chimerical undertaking. However, in 1718, he 
resigned his benefice in the south part of Norway, 
and removed with his wife and children to Bergen. 
His proposals did not meet with a favourable recep- 
tion, either from the merchants or clergy of that 
city ; he therefore went to Copenhagen in 1719, 
and laid his plan before the king ; who sent an 
order to the magistrates of Bergen, to propose to 
the citizens the erecting of a Greenland company. 
This, after many difficulties, was at last effected 
