Green-Mountain freeman. [volume] (Montpelier, Vt.) 1844-1884, 1846-04-30
HISTORICAL.
Greenland.

English antiquarians are pursuing interesting
inquiries relative to the original settlement of
Greenland, and the character of its soil and eli
mate. 1t was supposed originally to have been
connected with our continent but it has been
distinctly ascertaned that it is separated from
the American continent by wide channel call
ed Davis straits, and extends beyond 78 degrees
of latitude
The most extraordinary fact about Greenland
is the wonderful change its climate has under
gone. Barren soils have been reclaimed by
emigration and industry, and cold climates
changed into warmer ATTITUDES by clearing the
woods aud. letting in the rays of the sun but
we have no instance on record, OF settlements
originally in warm climates and fruitful soils, be-
coming in centuries cold bleak, and barren !;
and yet such has been the case with Greenland.
The country, although now consisting of little
else than barren rocks, mountains covered with
snow and ice, and valleys filled with glaciers
although its coast, now lined with floods of ice,
and checkered with cebergs of immense size,
was once easily accessible, and its soil was
fruitful, and well repaid the cuItivator of the
earth.
This country was discovered by the Scandi.
navians, towards the close of the tenth century,
and settlement was effected on the eastern
coast in the year 992, by company of adven-
turers from Iceland, under the command of Eric
the Red. Emigrants hocked thither from Ice
land and Norway and the germs of European
enterprise and civilization appeared on different
parts of the coast A colony was established in
Greenland, and it babe fair to go on and prosper.
That the climate must have been mild and the
soil fruitful, we gather from the fact that in
400 there were not less than 100 villages, 10
parishes and two monasteres, and for 400 years
there was constant and profitable intercourse
with the Danish provinces and Europe. But in
l406 every thing was changed-a wall or ice
barrier rose along the coast, and no landing
could be effected, and up to the seventeenth cen
fury the whole coast was bockaded by insur-
mountable barriers of ice-vegetation was de-
Istroyed, and all vestiges Of its former inhabit-
ants are gone-parts Of houses, churches, &c,
remain, but the inhabitants have all persisted
by cold.
One of our contemporaries, in referring to
this gloomy subject says: " 1t would require no
vivid imagination to picture the appalling des-
truction, which bleached the features and chill
ed the hearts Of these unhappy coonsts, when
they began to realize their forlorn condition,
when the cold rapidly increased, and their har.
bors became permanently blocked with icebergs,
and the genial rays of the sun were obscured
by fogs-when the winters became for the first
time intensely rigid, cherries and dreary-when
the summers were also cold and the soil unpro-
ductive-when mountains were no longer crown
ed with forests, but covered with snow and ice
throughout the year, and the once verdant val
eys were filled with gaciers-when the wonted
inhabitants of the woods and waters were des-
troyed, or exiled by the severity Of the weather,
and their places supplied perhaps, by monsters
of huge and frghtful character"