Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/159

where they could get land of their own, and at a distance little more than half of that from Norway to Iceland. The discovery and colonisation of land within a distance so short, compared to the usual voyage from Iceland to Norway, is not incredible, nor wonderful. The means of subsistence in both countries have probably been very much the same. Seals, whales, fish of various kinds, reindeer, hares, wild fowl, would give subsistence; oil, skins, feathers, furs—which in the middle age were in great estimation for dress,—would give surplus products for exchange. Cattle, if we may believe the sagas, were kept in considerable numbers. Corn was not produced in either country. The balance of the natural products which man may subsist on,—such as game, reindeer, seals, fish, and of furs and feathers for barter,—may have been even in favour of Greenland. The extinction of such a colony, after existing for 400 years, is certainly more extraordinary than its establishment, and almost justifies the doubt whether it ever had existed. Several causes are given for this extraordinary circumstance. One is the gradual accumulation of ice on both sides of this vast peninsula, by which not only the pasturages, and temperature in which cattle could subsist, may have been diminished, and with these one main branch of the subsistence of the population; but also the direct communication with small vessels coasting along the shores and through the sounds of Greenland may have been interrupted, and the voyage round Cape Farewell outside of the isles, and ice, and sounds, have been too tempestuous for such vessels as they possessed. Another cause was probably the great pestilence called the black death, which appeared in Europe about 1349, and which seems to have been more universal and destructive than the cholera, the plague, or any other visitation known in the history of the human race. It extinguished entirely populations