Of the Situation and Extent of Greenland.

GREENLAND lies but forty miles to the West of Iceland, beginning from 59° 50´ North Latitude. The Eastern coast extends itself in the North as far as Spitzbergen, between 78° and 80°; which is thought to be an island, separated from the continent of Greenland. The Western shore is discovered as far as seventy odd degrees. Whether it be a large island, or borders upon countries to the North, is not yet found out; there seems great reason to believe it is contiguous to America on the North West side; because there we meet with the bay or inlet, which in the sea charts is called Davis’s Straits, from an Englishman, who in the year 1585 was the first discoverer of it; and is yearly frequented by ships of different nations, on account of the Whale Fishery: but nobody as yet has been able to find out the bottom of it. And according to the notice we have endeavoured to gather from those Greenlanders who live farthest to the North, there is either but a very narrow passage between America and Greenland, or, as is most likely, they are quite contiguous[21]: and I am the more inclined to believe this, because the farther you go Northward in the said Strait, the lower is the land; contrary to what we observe where it borders on the seas or main ocean, it never wants lofty promontories. It has been the commonly received opinion, of a long standing, that Greenland borders upon the Asiatic Tartary and Muscovia on the North East: what confirms them in this notion is an old story they give credit to, that a certain Harrald goat did travel by land, over mountains and rocks, from Greenland to Norway, bringing along with him a she goat, of whose milk he lived on the journey; by which he got the surname of Harrald goat. Furthermore, the ancient Greenland Christians, in their Chronicles, relate, that there were come to them from the Northern parts, foreign rein deer and sheep, marked upon the ears, and with some marks tied to their horns; from which they concluded, that the Northern parts of Greenland were also inhabited.—Vid. Theodore Torlaccius. But the contrary is proved by later experiments made by the navigation of Dutchmen and others to the North.—See Zordrager’s Greenland Fishery, Part ii, ch. 10.

Greenland is a high and rocky country, always covered with ice and snow (except on the sea side, and in the bays or inlets) which never thaws nor melts away. You may judge of the height by the prospect they yield at more than twenty Norway miles distance from the shore. The whole coast is surrounded with a vast number of large and small islands. There are a great many inlets and large rivers to be met with, among which the principal is called Baal’s River, in 64°, and has been navigated eighteen or twenty Norway miles up the country; where the first Danish lodge was settled in the year 1721. In all sea charts you will find laid down Frobisher’s Strait and Baer Sound which they pretend, form two large islands, adjacent to the main land; which I think are not to be found, at least not upon the coast of Greenland; for I could not meet with any thing like it in the voyage I undertook in the year 1723 Southward, going upon discoveries; though I went as far as to 60° that way: but at present the newer charts lay them down, the Northern strait in 63°, and the Southern in 62°. Some of the ancients, whom Thormoder follows in his Greenland History, place them between 61° and 60°. So that the charts differ mightily in this particular. Besides this, there is not a word or a syllable mentioned in our ancient records of Greenland of the aforesaid two straits and large islands: they only inform us, that after the old Norwegians and Icelanders had began to settle colonies on the East side of Greenland, over against Iceland, they continued to spread themselves all along the shore and in the bays, as far as Baal’s River, where they stopped, and where we find many ruins of the old Norwegian edifices. And whereas I myself have lately met with so many stone buildings, so far to the South, I think my conclusion is good, that the land upon which these houses stand is no particular island, but contiguous to the main. It is therefore very reasonable to believe, that whereas the ancients took notice of, and so accurately described, all those bays and islands that were inhabited, they would not have passed by in silence these two large islands upon which such stately buildings were erected. And for this reason I have hereto joined a new map or delineation of Greenland, to show the contiguity of the East and West Greenland, agreeably to other new charts of Thormoder and others, which I follow, as far as I find them not contradictory to the description of the ancients and to my own experience.