Connecticut western news., 1878-07-11
TWO LONG.LOST COLONIES.
The Strange Disappearance of the Morse
 Settlers of 9s7 in Greenland.

The Strange Disappearance of the Morse
 Settlers of 0S7 in Greenland.
 The fitting out of several Arctic expe- ditions has recalled tke mysterious dis appearance of the Norwegian and Dan- ish colonies which, first planted on the east and vest coasts of Greenland about the year A. D. 1000, thrived apace for four centuries and vanished forever in the middle of the fifteenth century. The popular story is that the Norsemen set tied ill Greenland in 9S7. A Danish colony took possession of the west shore and Norwegian colony of the east shore of the peninsula. They were separated by desert tract eighty miles in width, but kept up communication with each other in summer by canoes and in winter by deer and dog trains. They sustained themselves by hunting and fishing, and later on by raising cattle, the pasturage of Greenland being at that time luxu- riant. In 1850 the Danish colony was beset by Esquimaux and broken up, and the last that was heard of either settle ment was in 1425. In 144s Pope Nicho- las ". in letter to the English court stated that the colonists had been att tackled by fleet of savages and mur- dered to g man, but he did not vouch for the accuracy of his information. In 1922 Captain Scoresby discovered huts containing hunting gear and household utensils of Morse pattern on the west coast, and claimed that these had been the dwellings, of the lost oolonists, The popular idea at that time was that 0 set clement of the descendants of these Norsemen existed in some terra incoo- 'sstG far beyond the ice-felds and near the pole; and Lieutenant Frederick Schwatka, who sailed for the Arctic seas last month, was credited in Washing ton dispatch the other day with saving that "the grandest undertaking of the present age would be to strive to reach that isolated colony"
 In some of the old records of the Re- collet Fathers Tn Quebec which were sent to Paris in 1759 frequent mention was made of legends and traditions touch ing this Morse colony. The first of the Recollets landed in Canada in cone of Champlain's ships in 1915, nearly two centuries after the Greenland colony disappeared. Others rapidly followed them, and in 1882 one of the missionary fathers, Father de Maurine, sailed to the west shore of Newfoundland, where he found several camps of Esquimaux, who were wintering there. He learned from them-it was an Esquim ux tradi- tion-that at one time in the remote ages, as he expresses it, men of the stature and mien of French sailors lived in peace and amity with their forefathers. There were hundreds of them, and some- tunes they took ship and sailed away to the southeast, returning after many days After countless years these strangers | divided themselves into two bodies, one going to the west and the other to the east shore. From that time forth their nature seemed changed, and they at | tackled and murdered one another. One winter it was dark for four months, and the cold was so intense that even the Esquimaux perished in their abodes. Fearing that the strife of the strange people had enraged the god of the wind and sen the Esqmmaux fed while it was yet dark to the southward :; and when the darkness passed away they sailed in fright to lonely island, where they dwelt for many years. On their return they found the face of the earth changed, Vast ice-fAlds covered the pasture lands where the strangers had dwelt, and the whole region was desolate. The strang- ers houses were buried beneath noun tains of ice, and no living thing was to be seen but the bear and the walrus.
 Father Paul Ragdeneau, the celebrated Jesuit, whose reports to his superiors ir France contain much trustworthy infor nation concerning New France, an6 who figured oonspicuously under the regime of M. De Ailleboust towards the close of the seventeenth century, relates at second hand an Indian tradition close ly resembling that current among the Esquimaux. But perhaps the most i'm portant story is that told by the Jesuit Malligeye. In 164s, accompanied by several Hurons, he advanced along tn, north shore of the Gulf and penetrated into Labrador. Eighty days journey inland he came upon a solitary band O savages who spoke the Huron tongu, with difficulty. From the chief ant medicine men he learned that they wer, the descendants of party of Huron who had fled from an inter-tribal war not through oowardice, but because the, had taken wives from the band which tn, Hurons had attacked. Their fathers hat met with Esquimaux, and the two peo ples had been blended into one. The, had preserved their language to som
 extent, but the Esquimaux tongue wa more familiar to them than the Huron They were rich in Esquimaux traditions and these they had illustrated by rud
 paintings on wood and stone. They ;n terpreted many of these hieroglyph for k ather Malligeye, the principal one which covered nearly hundred woode, tablets, having reference, beyond doubt to the Morse colony. It ran thus: Fla
 back in the past, when the Esquimau thought they were the only people O
 tue earth, and that the world was bound
 ed by their familiar shores, @ fleet (
 strangers landed and took possession ( beautiful country where the grass wa
 always green. They built houses (