Daily Republican., 1883-06-21
THEORY ABOUT GREENLAND.
An Expedition 10 See Whether the
ley Mountains Shut In Green
Fields.

+. Gpthenb burg on his tenth Arctic eXpe
- dition. He was born in Finland jus
: fifty years ago. Half his lifetime ha
= been spent in Arctic exploration, 0
$ in making preparations for it.
The Sofia, which has been lent by tn,
Swedish Government, is small steam
er, carefully fitted for the work she has
to do, which is not specially dangerous
None of the Vega staff accompany thei
; old leader into Greenland, though sci
ence is well represented on board til,
Sofia. Nordenskjold is supported by
DR.. Nathorst as geologist and paleontolo
gist, Herr Kothotf' for birds and insects
DR.. Halnberg as photographer, Dr. Ber
lii as surgeon and naturalist in general
; and Herr Forsstrand as preserver O
specimens.
AS ice master one of the bOldest Nor
wegian skipp,rs has been selected
J0hanesen, who in his walrus schooner
has sailed far beA ond the north point o.
, Novaya Zemlya. The or W consists o.
tWenty-tolr men.
His main object is to penetrate into
the heart Of Greenland, in order to tes,
his theory tiIat the permanent ice il
real y only q band surrounding the in.
terror, wh}ch in summer, ut least, i
literally a land Of greenery. In this
trying journey Norlenskjold will be
accompanied by at least one Of his
statt and ten Of his crew, and
will be equipped with all the ap-
pliAnces requisite for ice travelling In
providing this equipment LIE has been
guided not only oy the experience of
Alpine climbers, but by the knowledge
he acquired twelve years ago, when in
company with Palander, he succeeded
in penetrating thirty miles inland from
the head Of Auleifsivik Fjord, his start
ing point in the present expedition,
= bout thirty Or forty miles from the
coast the interior Seems to rise sudden
ly like a huge wall OF ice, cleft here and
there, fortunately, by valleys, by means
Of which the expedition will be able to
reach 'he uneven plateau Of the
interior. The first forty miles are like
ly to be the most trying; the coast
region is cut up by gaping crevasses
and broad rivers in the midst ofrugged
hills of ice, and these will necessitate
long uetOurS. The rivers, as a
rule, terminate in magnificent water
falls, which plunge suddenly into what
seem to be bottomless abysses of ice
In his former journey Nordensk jold
attained Il height of about 1000 feet,
and east and north the country seemed
to rise gradually, and presented the
appearance Ola billowy sea suddenly
frozen.
Auleitsivik Fjord, from which the
| - Y "
opens just below Disco Island, and
the land. AT this point Greenland is
about its broadest, so that the line of
exploration has been we'll chosen to
test the theory which has prompted the
expedition. This theory is no new one
on the part of Nordenskjold, for AS
long ago as his former expedition in
1870 he seems to have come to the con-
clusion that Hebers "icy mountains :"
We're confined to the regions of the
Greenland coast, surrounding la,!u
comparatively free from ice, and even
wooded in its southern parts. II Nor
denskjold succeeds in confirming his
hypothesis, it will be one of the tri-
umphs of scientific prediction
1t will be after the return from this
inland journey, probably in the early
part of September, that the expedition
will make an attempt to land on the
southeast coast to search for remains of
the old Morse colonies founded here yUU
years ago. While the Danes were har-
rying the coasts OF Saxon England,
eighty years before William, the Nor
man, landed at Pevensey, Red Erik,
outlaWed in Iceland, set out to seek the
land which Gunbjorn had seen far to
the westward 100 years earlier. This
land he found, and made it his home,
and colonized it with his kinsmen and
friends, who reared their villages and
farm houses and churches over a great
stretch OF the southwest coast
At their most tlulrishing period these
old Morse colonies probably numbered
10000 inhabitants. Even in Red Erik's
time adventurous spirits sailed still
further west, and planted outlying
settlements on the shores Of Vinland
Helluland, and Markland the first
Europeans who set foot on a land on |
which centuries later their kinslnen were
to rear one of the greatest nations on the
face of the earth. For the old Morse
Vin!and wa, in all probability the
modern Massachusetts,, while Mark
land and Helluland have been identi-
fed with Nova Scotia, Newfoundland,
and perhaps Labrador.
1t seems strange that spirits so enter.
prising and adventurous, the country
men OF the Vikings who kept Europe in
terror, from the Orkneys to the Medi-
terranean, who mastered England, and
gave her dynasty and an
should have let these mo-
discoveries pas into oblivion,
should have finally turnel their backs
upon a land of uubounded promise and
settled down in cont"ntment on the ice
bound shores Of Greenland.
The truth i, that the NVrSelnrn at
home never seem 10 nave realize the
vast importance Of tue discoveries of
heir ventureSone kju,niru, and
although as We have said, I'll" pupula-
ion increased to 10000, the colnnlun-
,ation with Iceland and Norway soon
became tittul, and after the l4th centu-
" we hear little OF them. We have,
however, Il brief, written in l44S by the ,
Pope to u bishop Of Norway, trea ing of , :,
he pititul condition of the inhabitants
'fGreenland, who, 80 years before, had !,
'een attacked by a hostile fleet, which
arred off people of both sexes into cap !.
ivity. With much plausibility, these .
INVADERS are conjectured to have come
rom the British Islands.
BY the latter half OF the fifteenth cen
ury all communication with the moth
r country had ceased, and when John a
Davis re discovered Greenland, in 1880, +
10 other but Esquinaux people were ',
Ound anywhere on the coast. Tradi-
ions, however, still exist among the "
ireenlanlers as to the first white visi-
ors, and from these and the Sagas ii is II II
vdenl that latterly frequent collisions u
ook place with the natives, and the n
is that the remnant of the
olonists was absorbed by the Esqui-
laux. bishops oft;reenlstnd continued >,
, be appointed down TO the sixteenth -
aptiIrN ht,t these never NADIA llV tt- ~