Note 6 — HISTORICAL INTRODUCTION.

Torfæus possessed three versions of this account in German, Danish, and Icelandic. His narrative runs,—The most Eastern settlement of Greenland lies under the promontory of Herjolfsness, and is called Skagefiord. Here is an uncultivated mountain, called Barrafell. At the mouth is a long sandbank (pulvinus longus), stretched across, so that no ships can enter, except when the water is raised to a great height by the wind and tide. At that time numbers of whales crowd into the bay. Here is a never-failing fishery, which is part of the episcopal domain.