EXPLORATION OF GREENLAND.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 1010, 1 August 1883, Page 4

EXPLORATION OF GREENLAND.

Referring to Baron Nordensjold’s expedition to Greenland and to the probable results of his visit to the interior, a writer in Gentlemen's Magazine says: —He may not find such a genial, luxurious, sunny resting-place as the Kaafjord (the terminal branch of the Altenfjord), and he may not be startled, as I was when, on landing there twenty-seven years ago, I heard my name pronounced in friendly greeting by two fashionably dressed young ladies residing there in N, lat. deg., where I expected to find only Lapps and Quains; but he may, if he gets a few degrees farther north, or even no farther north, in the 'midst of Greenland; 1 meet with a somewhat similar . and still more startling greeting. H e May come upon a people speaking a language like his own, and linking it with the old classic tongue [of the Icelandic poets; for at about the year 1000, when the “old Norse” of the Skalds was still a living language and Greenland was really green, a colony of Norwegians settled there, and were . still heard of up to about the end of the fourteenth century. Where are they now? They may have perished, but from what I have seen of the Norwegians who now cultivate on fjelds above the Geirangerfiord farms that are inaccessible to ordinary English tourists, and which remain in the same

family that held them when William the Norpaan . conquered England, it is evident that a ' colony of “ hardy Norseman ” could not be exterminated! easily. When the change came that glaciated their original settlements, the Greenland colonists probably moved as the ice advanced. If lam right Concerning the fringing zone of Arctic mountains, this advance took place along their two prevailing slopes, i.e. landward and seaward. Had the colonists retreated seaward they must have perished, unless they had the means of embarkation, aqd this they probably understood. If they retreated landward, a long inland range was open to them where they might ultimately find gentler slopes and lowlying land and better climate, where a hardy N° rseman could obtain the means Of subsistence ; but having done this, they would be shut out from further communication with us by the same that resists our approach to therri. ’ The flight of birds and other facts indicate the existence of such a food-producing region in the interior of Greenland. With the knowledge of the country possessed by these colonists they would naturally proceed towards it. The absence of their remains on the Greenland coast indicates that they did not move Seawards, and affords presumptive evidence of their movement in the contrary direction. It is, therefore, probable that the discovery of either their living descendants or th<t: remains of their handiwork may reward the explorer who shall intelligently avail himself of the physical configuration of the land, and proceed along the lines of smallest difficulty,- to wherever they may lead him. He would thus follow the natural course of the Norse colonists wheft they retreated from the grasp of the advancing glaciation of the fourteenth century.