from dread of these incursions, and as defeat was nearly certain if any resistance was offered to their impetuous course, their successes and hardihood knew no bounds.

But, if the terror of their name was widely spread on land, their maritime expeditions occasioned still greater ravages. The sea was literally covered with their vessels, and their voyages were characterised by a fearlessness and contempt of danger which excites our admiration and surprise to the utmost extent, when we take into consideration the scanty means at their disposal, unassisted, like the seamen of the present day, by the mighty arm of science. For two hundred years they almost incessantly ravaged England, and frequently subdued it.

They soon spread, like a devouring flame, over Lower Saxony, Friesland, Holland, Flanders, and the banks of the Rhine as far as Mentz. They penetrated into the heart of France, having long before ravaged the coasts; they everywhere found their way up the Somme, the Seine, the Loire, the Garonne and the Rhone. Within the space of thirty years, they frequently pillaged and burnt Paris, Amiens, Orleans, Poitiers, Bordeaux, Toulouse, Saintes, Angouléme, Nantes, and Tours. They settled themselves in Camargue, at the mouth of the Rhone, from whence they wasted Provence and Dauphiny as far as Valence. In short, they ruined France, levied immense tribute on its monarchs, burnt the palace of Charlemagne at Aix-la-Chapelle, and, in conclusion, caused one of the finest provinces of the kingdom to be ceded to them.2

The northmen always turned their footsteps to the south as the scene for their depredations, but

2 Mallett's "Northern Antiquities."

as the sea was covered with their sails, it was extremely possible that accident, or the indulgence of that roving disposition which has rendered them so famous, would sometimes lead them on voyages of discovery in a high northern latitude, and thus the sea-king first entered upon that rich field of geographical discovery in which the Rosses, Parry, Franklin, Richardson, Back, and many other Arctic heroes of the nineteenth century-have since gained their well earned laurels. It appears, however, that it was by a mere accident that they first obtained any knowledge of a more northern land than the Færöe Islands.

According to the Scandinavian Sagas, a celebrated sea-rover named Naddod, during a voyage to the Færöe Islands, about the year 860, was driven by a violent storm on an island, to which, from the vast quantity of snow he observed, he gave the name of "Snowland." This island was afterwards visited successively by two Swedes, Gardar Svafason and Flokko, by whom the name was changed to that which it has ever since retained-Island, or Iceland.

The unfavourable report which these adventurers gave of the climate of the island on their return was probably the reason that no attempt was made to colonise it until the year 874, when Ingolf, and his brother-in-law Leif, or Hiorleif, two famous Norwegian adventurers, after committing dreadful ravages on the English coasts, set sail with their plunder to the northern seas, and planted a colony on its bleak and barren shores. They met with no inhabitants on the island, but conjectured that it had been visited before, as they found numerous wooden crosses and other articles, which very probably had belonged to fishermen from the north of Ireland or the Western Islands

of Scotland, who had been cast away or had made it a kind of fishing station.

The colony thus formed speedily rose into importance, and many noble families who would not tamely submit to the ambitious encroachments of Harald Hárfagra, the "fairhaired" king and conqueror of Norway, retired thither for refuge, and for four hundred years resisted all the attempts made by various Norwegian princes to subvert

them.

About a century after the above discovery, the Icelanders received into their body, Thorwald, a powerful Norwegian chieftain, who had been banished for homicide. His son, Eirek, surnamed "the red hand," it is believed on account of his similar sanguinary propensities, followed him. Eirek, however, though far removed from the scenes of bloodshed in which the youth of Scandinavia generally passed the greater part of their existence, was unwilling to lead an inactive life. He therefore determined on a voyage for the discovery of unknown lands, and towards the close of the tenth century (A. D. 982) set sail in the prosecution of his design. He directed his course to the west, and soon made that part of the coast of Greenland which is now called Herjolf's Ness. Two lofty mountains which first met his view he named Huitserken, or whiteshirt, and Blaaserken, or blueshirt, the one being covered with snow and the other with ice. He landed on a small island west of Cape Farewell, where he passed the winter, and in the spring explored the mainland, and finding it covered with verdure, bestowed on it the euphonious title of "Groenland," remark

3 "Greenland is a place in nature nothing like unto the name: for certainly there is no place in the world yet knowne and discovered that is less greene than it."-Purchas.

ing, that a good name would induce people to go and settle there.

After an absence of three years, a period which excites our surprise when we consider how necessarily ill-equipped for encountering all the rigours of an Arctic winter the expedition must have been, Eirek returned to Iceland, where he described in such glowing terms the advantages of his new discovery, that numbers followed him in the year 986, to settle on a creek, named after him, Eireksfjörd, which soon became a very considerable colony.

Some years after this, Leif, the son of Eirek, visited the court of Olaf-Tryggvason, the first Christian king of Norway, and was converted to Christianity. He was accompanied on his return home by a priest, for the pious purpose of introducing the same faith into the Greenland colony, which had meanwhile continued to increase in size and importance: the western district, or Vestre Bygd, numbering four parishes, ninety farms, and a numerous population, whilst the eastern, or Oestre Bygd, contained twelve parishes, one hundred and ninety farms, and two convents, besides being the see of a bishop.

The cathedral was in Garda. The first bishop was ordained A. D. 1121, the seventeenth, and last, in 1404. Documentary proofs of his having officiated in 1409 at a marriage in Garda have been discovered by the learned Finn Magnusen, but after this date nothing was ever more heard of the Greenland colonies;-broken urns, implements, and fragments of church bells, are now the only vestiges that remain to us of what was once a

Eireksfjörd is supposed to be the modern Tunnulliorbik in the Julianeshaab district on the eastern coast of Baffin's Bay, in lat. 60° 55'.

thriving and busy community. How they perished is unknown, though numerous hypotheses have been set up by various writers. Their decline and eventual extermination, however, are probably referable to the crooked policy pursued by the mother-country, which had the effect of destroying all their trade, which was necessarily their very vital principle, and as it appears they were always "sorely infested with a wild nation," on whom they had bestowed the contemptuous title of Skrælings," or dwarfs, it is not improbable that the final blow was given by them. Magnusen justly observes, "Iceland would probably have shared the same fate as Greenland, had not British merchants, in spite of opposition, supplied it with articles absolutely necessary for the existence of its inhabitants."

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It was an opinion, long held, that the two lost colonies were situated, the one on the eastern and the other on the western coast of Greenland, but this question was finally set at rest by Captain W. A. Graah, of the Danish royal navy, who, in 1829, by order of the Danish government, explored the eastern coast in umiaks, or Esquimaux boats, from Cape Farewell to the sixty-fourth parallel of latitude, without finding a single trace of them that would lead one to suppose it had ever been colonised.5

At this period is involved a point of great geographical interest, viz.: the discovery of the great North American continent by the Scandinavians, ages before Columbus "gave to Castile and Leon a new world," and we much regret, that through

5 Narrative of an expedition to the east coast of Greenland, sent by order of the king of Denmark, in search of the lost colonies, under the command of Captain W. A. Graah, &c. Translated by G. G. Macdougall, F.R.S., N.A., for the Geographical Society, 1837. See also "Geographical Journal,” i. 274.