Company, the ruins of their edifices were still to be found. The fate of the eastern colony was, if possible, still more deplorable. It had, for a time, a greater population than that of the western side. “A succession of sixteen bishops is recorded in the Iceland annals,” says Barrow, “but when the seventeenth was proceeding from Norway, in 1406, to take possession of his see, a stream of ice had fixed itself to the coast, and rendered it completely inaccessible; and from that period to the present time no intercourse whatever has been had with the unfortunate colonists.” It is related in the “History of Greenland” by Thormoder Torfager, that Amand, Bishop of Skalholt, in Iceland, in returning to Norway from that island, about the middle of the sixteenth century, was driven by a storm near to the east coast of Greenland, and got so close that the inhabitants could be seen driving their cattle, but they did not attempt to land. The fate of the East Greenland colony has been the cause of much discussion, some contending that it never was on the eastern side, but on the western; but that there were two distinct colonies cannot be doubted. A field of ice has apparently blocked the eastern coast for centuries, and all attempts made to penetrate it have failed, as we shall see in the progress of our narrative. Up to the end of the last century, the Esquimaux of the western side spoke of a foreign race, taller than themselves, and of whom they were greatly afraid, regarding them as cannibals and as their natural enemies. When they had met, the former had always fled, the latter shooting after them with arrows. Crantz, a great authority on Greenland, says:—“If this report can be depended upon, we might suppose that these men were descended from the old Norwegians, had sheltered themselves from the savages in the mountains, lived in enmity to them out of resentment for the destruction of their ancestors, pillaged them in the spring when sustenance failed them, and were looked upon by the savages as man-eaters, and fabulously represented through excess of fear.” The above introduction to our subject will pave the way for the period when the history of Arctic and northern voyages becomes more and more definite. We begin with those of the Zeni brothers, from which the mists of obscurity and error have only recently been cleared, through the patient researches of a most careful student and geographer.