Note 107 — CONTENTS AND ILLUSTRATIONS.

F. The Lost Greenland Colonies.—After intercourse with the colonies in Greenland ceased, and definite tradition in Iceland had died out, and when the question of the re-discovery should arise, it was natural that attention should first be turned to that coast of Greenland which lay opposite Iceland as the likelier sites of the lost colonies, and in this way we find all the settlements placed in the maps of the sixteenth century. The Archbishop Erik Walkendorf, of Lund, in the early part of that century had failed to persuade the Danish government to send an expedition. King Frederick II was induced, however, to send one in 1568; but it accomplished nothing; and again in 1579 he put another in command of an Englishman, Jacob Allday, but the ice prevented his landing. A Danish navigator was more successful in 1581; but the coast opposite Iceland yielded as yet no traces of the Norse settlers. Frobisher’s discovery of the west coast seems to have failed of recognition among the Danes; but they with the rest of Europe did not escape noting the importance of the explorations of John Davis in 1585-86, through the straits which bear his name. It now became the belief that the west settlement must be beyond Cape Farewell. In 1605, Christian IV of Denmark sent a new expedition under Godske Lindenow; but there was a Scotchman in command of one of the three ships, and Jacob Hall, who had probably served under Davis, went as the fleet pilot. He guided the vessels through Davis’s Straits. But it was rather the purpose of Lindenow to find a northwest passage than to discover a lost colony; and such was mainly the object which impelled him again in 1606, and inspired Karsten Rikardsen in 1607. Now and for some years to come we have the records of voyages made by the whalers to this region, and we read their narratives in Purchas and in such collections of voyages as those of Harris and Churchill.[690] They yield us, however, little or no help in the problem we are discussing. In 1670 and 1671 Christian V sent expeditions with the express purpose of discovering the lost colonies; but Otto Axelsen, who commanded, never returned from his second voyage, and we have no account of his first.