xxxn 
INTRODUCTION. 
want of boats; but being of a cruel disposition, 
they shoot after them with arrows, which they 
carry in a quiver upon their backs. 
“ If this report could be depended on,” Crantz 
observes, “ we might suppose that these men, and 
the above mentioned cannibals, were both one 
people, who, descended from the old Norwegians, 
had sheltered themselves from the savages in the 
mountains, lived in enmity with them, out of re¬ 
sentment for the destruction of their ancestors, 
pillaged them in the spring, when sustenance 
failed them, and were looked upon by the sava¬ 
ges as mcn-eaters, and fabulously represented 
through an excess of fear.” 
It is rather curious, that some collateral cir¬ 
cumstances are considerably in favour of the truth 
of what these Esquimaux reported. Crantz men¬ 
tions a rumour that reached Norway, about the 
year 1718, of a vessel belonging to Bergen having 
been wrecked in the ice on the coast of Greenland, 
and of the crew, who retreated to the land, having 
been “ murdered, and voraciously eaten by the 
/ 
savages.” Which frightful tale, he adds, “ was 
