Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/164

Cape Farewell; although the Eystribygd is represented in all the sagas as the most populous settlement, having 190, and the other only 90 townships. It is now generally admitted that the east coast of Greenland never was inhabited at all by the old colonists; that their east and west settlements had no reference to being east or west of Cape Farewell, but to being easterly or westerly from some place within Davis's Straits, and which formed their division between the two settlements; and in this view the east settlement would be the country nearest to Cape Farewell, and, as at present, the best provided with the natural means of subsistence; and the western and poorer settlement would be the country beyond it to the north; and that Gunbiornskerry was not in the midway, or halfway, as it had been interpreted, in the sea between Iceland and Greenland, but some island on the east coast of Greenland, which was half-way, in point of distance and time, between Iceland and the eastern settlement in Greenland. From it they took a new departure, and coasted along, with sails and oars, round Cape Hvarf, or Cape Farewell, and up Davis's Straits to the eastern settlement. Hans Egide, his son Paul, and others, had from time to time examined and sent home accounts of remains of ancient buildings which they had found on their missionary excursions. Arctander, as early as 1777, had made reports of such remains. The Society of Northern Antiquaries at Copenhagen took up the subject with great zeal in this century; and researches have been made of which the result is a kind of synthetic proof, as it may be called, of the veracity of the saga. The remains of former inhabitation of the country, of houses, paths, walls, stepping-stones, churches, foundations of rows of dwellings, show that the saga accounts have not been exaggerated; and it must give every fair unprejudiced reader a confidence which he had not