following continual wars between the Danes and Swedes, which caused the navigation to those parts to be laid aside, and chiefly by the great difficulty and innumerable dangers of such navigation; which several causes cut off all intelligence, that might be had of that country’s state, as may be seen in Pontanus and Claudius Lyscander. The ancient historians divide Greenland into two parts or districts, called West Bygd, and East Bygd. As to the West district, which is said to have contained four parishes, and one hundred villages, all we find in the ancient histories amounts to this, viz. that in the fourteenth century it was sorely infested by a wild nation called Schrellings, and laid so waste, that when the inhabitants of the Eastern district came to the assistance of the Christians, and to expel the barbarous nation of the Schrellings, who were fallen upon the Christians, they found to their great astonishment the province quite emptied of its inhabitants, and nothing remaining but some cattle and flocks of sheep, straying wild and unguarded round about the fields and meadows; whereof they killed a good number, which they brought home with them in their ships. By which it appears, that the Norway Christians in the Western district were destroyed, and Christianity rooted out by the savage Heathens. The modern inhabitants of West Greenland, being, no doubt, the offspring of the before mentioned wild and barbarous Schrellings, have no certain account to give us of this matter; though they will tell you, that the old decayed dwelling places and villages, whose ruins are yet seen, were inhabited formerly by a nation quite different from theirs; and they also affirm, what the ancient histories tell us, that their ancestors made war with them, and destroyed them[23]. Now, as to the Eastern district, its present state is entirely unknown to us, as there is no approaching it with any shipping, upon account of the vast quantity of ice, driven from Spitzbergen and other Northern coasts upon this shore, which, adhering to the shore, barricades the land, and renders it wholly inaccessible. We may nevertheless gather from the above-mentioned expedition of the East Greenlanders against the Schrellingers, that after the destruction and total overthrow of the Western district and its colonies, the Eastern were yet standing and flourishing. But in what year this happened no notice is taken by the old historians. Nevertheless, from many tokens and remainders of probable evidence it may be inferred, that the old colony of the Eastern district is not yet quite extinct. To the confirmation of which, Thormoder, in his History of Greenland, alledges the following passage:--