NOTE.—The annexed map is a reduced fac-simile of the map in the _Efterretninger om Grönland uddragne af en Journal holden fra 1771 til 1788_, by Paul Egede (Copenhagen, 1789). Paul Egede, son of Hans, was born in 1708, and remained in Greenland till 1740. He was made Bishop of Greenland in 1770, and died in 1789. The above book gives a portrait. There is another fac-simile of the map in Nordenskjöld’s _Exped. till Grönland_, p. 234.] In the map of 1653, made by De la Martinière, who was of the Danish expedition to the north, Greenland was made to connect with Northern Asia by way of the North pole.[784] Nordenskjöld calls him the Münchhausen of the northeast voyagers; and by his own passage in the “Vega,” along the northern verge of Europe, from one ocean to the other, the Swedish navigator has of recent years proved for the first time that Greenland has no such connection. It yet remains to be proved that there is no connection to the north with at least the group of islands that are the arctic outlyers of the American continent. [Illustration: GREENLAND. Extracted from the “Carte de Grœnland” in Isaac de la Peyrère’s _Relation du Groenland_ (Paris, 1647). Cf. Winsor’s _Kohl Maps_, no. 122.] CHAPTER III. MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA. BY JUSTIN WINSOR. THE traditions of the migrations of the Chichimecs, Colhuas, and Nahuas,” says Max Müller,[785] “are no better than the Greek traditions about Pelasgians, Æolians, and Ionians, and it would be a mere waste of time to construct out of such elements a systematic history, only to be destroyed again, sooner or later, by some Niebuhr, Grote, or Lewis.” “It is yet too early,” says Bandelier,[786] “to establish a definite chronology, running farther back from the Conquest than two centuries,[787] and even within that period but very few dates have been satisfactorily fixed.” Such are the conditions of the story which it is the purpose of this chapter to tell.