XXIV 
INTRODUCTION. 
for this station in the year 1408. His predeces¬ 
sor Henry, however, was the Last Bishop who 
was known to reach his see, for Andrew is said 
to have been prevented from landing by the ice. 
The scanty annals of the Greenland colonics 
here come to a close, after which period, 1406 or 
1408, the trade with Iceland and Norway, that 
had previously been considerable, was discon¬ 
tinued, and, it would appear, no intercourse be¬ 
tween Iceland and Greenland was ever after ac¬ 
complished. 
Various arc the speculations on this strange 
suspension of intercourse. Some attribute it to 
the extermination of the colonists, either by the 
Skraellings (or wild Greenlanders), or by a re¬ 
markable pestilence called the black death , which 
raged about the middle of the fourteenth cen¬ 
tury, and spread all over Europe. Others ac- 
1 count for it by the sudden setting down of the 
polar ice, which, inclosing the eastern coast and 
Cape Farewell, as it generally does at the pre¬ 
sent day, cut off all communication with the pa¬ 
rent countries, deprived the colonists of their 
