It has sometimes been maintained that the closing in of ice-packs was the final stroke which extinguished the last hopes of the expiring colonists.[527] This view, however, meets with little favor among the more enlightened students of climatic changes, like Humboldt.[528] There has been published what purports to be a bull of Pope Nicholas V,[529] directing the Bishop of Iceland to learn what he could of the condition of the Greenland colonies, and in this document it is stated that part of the colonists had been destroyed by barbarians thirty years before,—the bull bearing date in 1448. There is no record that any expedition followed upon this urging, and there is some question as to the authenticity of the document.[530] In the _Relation_ of La Peyrère there is a story of some sailors visiting Greenland so late as 1484; but it is open to question. * * * * * Early in the sixteenth century fitful efforts to learn the fate of the colonies began, and these were continued, without result, well into the seventeenth century; but nothing explicable was ascertained till, in 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian priest, prevailed upon the Danish government to send him on a mission to the Eskimos. He went, accompanied by wife and children; and the colony of Godthaab, and the later history of the missions, and the revival of trade with Europe, attest the constancy of his purpose and the fruits of his earnestness. In a year he began to report upon certain remains which indicated the former occupation of the country by people who built such buildings as was the habit in Europe. He and his son Paul Egede, and their successors in the missions, gathered for us, first among modern searchers, the threads of the history of this former people; and, as time went on, the researches of Graah, Nordenskjöld, and other explorers, and the studious habits of Major, Rink, and the rest among the investigators, have enabled us to read the old sagas of the colonization of Greenland with renewed interest and with the light of corroborating evidence.[531] [Illustration: DEI COMMENTARII DEL Viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno il K. & delle guerre fatte nell’ Imperio Persiano, dal tempo di Vssuncassano in quà. LIBRI DVE. ET DELLO SCOPRIMENTO dell’ Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrouelanda, Estotilanda, & Icaria, fatto sotto il Polo Artico, da due fratelli zeni, M. Nicolòil, K. e M. Antonio. LIBRO VNO. CON VN DISEGNO PARTICOLARE DI tutte le dette parte di Tramontana da lor scoperte. CON GRATIA, ET PRIVILEGIO. VERITAS. IN VENETIA Per Francesco Marcolini. M D LVIII. ] * * * * *