There were two vessels, the _Sunshine_ of London, fifty-nine tons, with twenty-three persons on board, and the _Moonshine_ of Dartmouth, thirty-five tons, with nineteen. They left Dartmouth on the 7th of June, 1585, but had to put in at Falmouth and then at the Scillies, where Davis occupied the twelve days he spent there in surveying and charting the islands. On the 20th of July they were sailing down the east coast of Greenland, and were so little attracted by it that Davis called it the Land of Desolation. Nine days afterwards he found a group of many pleasant green islands bordering on the shore, while the mountains of the mainland were still covered with snow, and here he landed on the west coast at Gilbert Sound, as he named it, near where Godthaab now is, and entered into communication with the natives. [Illustration: A GREENLANDER IN HIS KAYAK] For such occasions, apparently, he had among the _Sunshine_ people four described as musicians, whom, on sighting the Eskimos, he sent for. As soon as they arrived from the ship he ordered them to strike up a dancing tune, and to their merry music Davis and his men began to caper as if they were enjoying themselves immensely, while the lookers-on gradually increased in number. "At length," he says, "one of them poynting up to the sunne with his hande would presently strike his brest so hard that we might hear the blowe. This he did many times, before he would any way trust us. Then John Ellis the master of the _Mooneshine_, was appointed to use his best policie to gaine their friendshippe: who strooke his breast and poynted to the sunne after their order: which when he had diverse times done, they began to trust him, and one of them came on shoare, to whom we threwe our caps, stockings and gloves, and such other things as then we had about us, playing with our musicke, and making signes of joy, and dancing. So the night comming we bade them farewell, and went aboord our barks."