.
his ship in order to carry them to Denmark; but they made so many violent efforts to escape, that it became necessary to secure them by cords in order to prevent them from plunging into the sea. When the savages upon the beach saw two of their countrymen made prisoners and fastened to the deck of the Danish vessel, they discharged a shower of stones and arrows upon the Danes, who were obliged to terrify them to a distance by firing off one of their great guns. The admiral returned to Denmark by himself, without knowing what had befallen the other two ships, with which he had originally embarked.
The Danish account of this expedition says, that the English captain with the two Danish vessels, which had separated from that under Lindenau, reached the coast at the Southern extremity of Greenland, or Cape Farewell. It is also certain that the English commander entered Davis’s Straits, and coasted along the shore to the East. He discovered a number of good harbours, a fine country, and verdant plains. The savages in this part of Greenland carried on some traffic with him; as those upon the other side had done with Lindenau; but they exhibited more distrust; for they had no sooner received the Danish commodities in exchange for their own than they took to their boats with as much precipitation as if they were pursued by an enemy.
The Danes armed themselves for the purpose of making a landing in one of the bays. The soil, where they went ashore, appeared to be a mixture of sand and rock, like that of Norway. Some fumes exhaled from the earth made them suppose that there were mines of sulphur in the neighbourhood; and they found many pieces of silver ore, which yielded twenty-six ounces of silver to the hundred weight of ore.
The English captain, who discovered many fine harbours or bays along this coast, gave them Danish names, and before his departure made a chart of what he had seen. He also directed four of the best formed savages, whom the Danes could seize, to be conveyed on board his ship. One of these four natives became so outrageous, that the Danes, not being able to haul him along, knocked him on the head with the but end of their muskets. This intimidated the three others, who followed without farther resistance.
But the natives of the place, who had beheld one of their companions put to death, and three made prisoners, united themselves in a body to avenge the one and to rescue the others. They pursued the Danes to the shore in order to execute these resolutions, and to prevent their embarkation. The Danes, however, saved themselves and their boats by a timely use of their fire-arms, which diffused great terror among the enemy. They now made good their retreat to their ships, and returned to Denmark with the three captured Greenlanders, whom they presented to the king, and who were found to be much better made and more civilized than those whom Godske Lindenau had imported. They also differed in manners, language, and dress.
The Danish monarch, who was gratified by the result of this first expedition, dispatched the same Admiral Lindenau to Greenland with five stout vessels in the following year, 1606. He departed from the Sound upon the 8th of May; having on board his ship the three savages whom the English captain had conveyed away, in order to serve as interpreters and guides. One of these savages fell sick and died during the voyage; and his body was thrown overboard. Godske Lindenau took the same route which the English captain had observed, and passed by Cape Farewell into Davis’s Straits. One of his five ships was lost sight of in a fog; but the four others arrived in Greenland. The natives showed themselves in great numbers upon the coast, but manifested no inclination to trade, or to trust the Danes, who, in their turn, showed the same want of confidence. This obliged the latter to proceed higher up the coast, where they discovered a finer harbour than that which they had left; but they found the natives as suspicious and intractable as at the former station, and indicating a determination to resort to force if the Danes attempted to land.
The Danes, not willing to hazard a landing in such inauspicious circumstances, sailed to a greater distance. As they proceeded along the coast, they met some of the natives in their canoes. They surprised six of these at different times, and took them on board along with their canoes and little equipments.
The Danes, having afterwards cast anchor in a third bay, one of the attendants of Godske Lindenau, who was a hardy and enterprising veteran, solicited the permission of his master to proceed alone to the shore, in order to reconnoitre the land, and, if possible, to establish some intercourse with the savages. But this unfortunate valet had no sooner set his foot upon the beach than he was seized, stabbed, and hacked in pieces by the natives; who, after this atrocity, retired out of the reach of the Danish guns.
These savages had knives and swords made of the horns or teeth of that fish which they call unicorn, and which they ground to an edge upon a stone; nor were they less sharp than if they had been made of iron or steel.
Godske Lindenau, not finding it practicable to establish any amicable communication with the people of this district, set sail for Denmark; but of the six Greenlanders whom he had recently forced on board, one was pierced with such regret at the thought of never more seeing his native home, that he threw himself into the ocean in a paroxysm of despair. Upon their return the Danes had the pleasure of rejoining the fifth ship, which had disappeared in a fog; but they had been only five days together when they were all separated by a storm; and a month elapsed before they could re-unite when the tempest had passed away. They arrived at Copenhagen upon the 5th of the following October, after having experienced many awful perils and hairbreadth escapes.
The King of Denmark, who deserves praise for his perseverance, now determined upon a third expedition to Greenland. He accordingly ordered two large ships to be fitted out, which he placed under the command of a Captain Karsten Richkardisen, a native of Holstein, whom he furnished with some sailors from Norway and Iceland that were acquainted with the navigation. These vessels sailed from the Sound on the 12th of May, but the Danish Chronicle has not stated in what year; nor was it known to Peyrere. On the 8th of June Richkardisen discovered the high points of the Greenland mountains; but he was prevented from landing by the rocks of ice which ran out far into the sea and rendered the coast inaccessible. He was therefore obliged to return without accomplishing the object of his voyage, as he despaired of being able to penetrate the icy barrier which blockaded the shore. No similar attempt has hitherto been successful; and the Eastern coast of Greenland, though for several centuries well known to, and habitually visited by, the Norwegians and Danes, is, at present, a terra incognita, notwithstanding the spirit of European adventure and the zeal of modern discovery.
The King of Denmark caused particular attention to be paid to the three savages who had survived the preceding, and the five who had been imported by the last expedition to Greenland. They were fed upon milk, butter, and cheese, as well as upon raw flesh and raw fish, to which they had been accustomed at home. They appeared to have an invincible repugnance to our baked bread and dressed meat; nor did they relish any kind of wine so much as the oil and grease of the whale. They often turned a wishful and desponding look to the North; and sighed so anxiously to return to the place of their nativity, that, whenever they were watched with less vigilance than usual, those who had an opportunity seized any boat that was at hand and put to sea, regardless of the dangers they had to encounter. A storm once overtook some of these intrepid adventurers at ten or twelve leagues from the Sound, and forced them back to the coast of Schonen, where they were made prisoners by the peasantry and conveyed back to Copenhagen. This caused them to be guarded with more rigour, and kept under greater restraint. But three of them fell sick and died of grief.
Five of these savages were alive and well when a Spanish Ambassador made his appearance in Denmark; and the Danish Monarch, in order to divert this stranger, caused these native Greenlanders to exhibit their manœuvres in their little canoes upon the sea. The Spanish Ambassador was quite delighted with the address which they displayed, and with the extraordinary celerity with which they glided over the waves. He made a present in money to each of the savages, which they expended in equipping themselves in the Danish fashion. They were accordingly seen booted and spurred, with large feathers in their hats; and in these habiliments they proposed to serve in the cavalry of the Danish King.
But these high spirits of the Greenlanders lasted only for a short time; for they soon relapsed into their usual melancholy. They became entirely absorbed with the idea of returning to their native country; and two of them having obtained possession of their little boats put out to sea. They were pursued, but only one of them was taken, and the other probably perished in the waves; for it cannot be supposed