Upon returning to Iceland, Eric was graciously received; and what with the fine name he had given to his new country, and the fine promises he held out, he had no trouble in obtaining all he asked for—that is, twenty-five ships loaded with adventurous people, and all the appliances for building up a colony. Thus provided, he set sail in the year 985; but only fourteen of these ships ever reached their destination. Some of the remaining eleven were lost at sea; others were wrecked upon the eastern coast of Greenland; others put back to Iceland in distress. Eric was resolved to found a nation for himself, and these fourteen cargoes of people gave him a sufficient nucleus. He went far up his fiord and began a settlement. A house was also built nearer to the sea—probably a look-out-house; for Eric expected other ships, and he, like a prudent man that he was, would set a watch for them. The ruins of this house may still be seen, and are not five minutes’ walk from the pastor’s house at Julianashaab. According to his expectations, other ships arrived, bringing cattle, sheep, and horses; likewise his wife, and sons and daughters. The settlement grew and prospered. Norwegians, Danes, Icelanders, people from the Hebrides, from the British Isles, from Ireland, and even from the south of Europe, came there in ships to trade. Emigrants poured in, new towns were built, new farms were cleared, and ambitious and adventurous men searched up and down the coast for other fields whereon to display their enterprise. How far north the most adventurous went we can not certainly know; but Rafn places one of their expeditions in latitude 75°, a point to which the stoutest ships of modern times can not now go without encountering serious risk. And all this was ventured, eight hundred years ago, in half-decked ships and open boats. It is positively known that one of their expeditions reached as far as Upernavik, latitude 72° 50´, a stone having been discovered near there, in 1824, by Sir Edward Parry, bearing the following inscription in Runic characters: “Erling Sighvatson and Biorn Thordarson and Eindrid Oddson on Saturday before Ascension week raised these marks and cleared ground. 1135.” Think of “clearing ground” in Greenland up in latitude 72° 50´! What kind of ground would now be found to clear? Naked wastes alone; and the desert sands are not more unproductive. But, as intimated already, the climate has certainly changed during the seven hundred years since this event happened; in evidence of which, it is not unimportant to observe that, in the old chronicles of the voyages of those ancient Northmen, there is very little mention made of ice as a disturbing element in navigation. And this brings us back to where we started—to the growth of glaciers in the Greenland fiords. From these glaciers come the icebergs, and a fiord which receives a glacier is not habitable.