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where nature, who always mingles some allay with the rigour of her severities, affords a tolerable asylum for men who know no better, and a most plentiful and delicate nourishment for cattle.
I ought to bestow a word or two upon another northern country dependent on the kingdom of Norway, as well as Iceland, but much more extensive, more unknown, and more savage: I mean Greenland, a vast country, which one knows not whether to call an island or continent. It extends from the 60th to the 80th degree of latitude; farther than that men have not penetrated. All that we can know for certain of it is, that this country, little known to geographers, stretches away from its southern point, named Cape Farewel, continually widening both towards the east and weft. The eastern coast in some places is not distant more than 40 miles from Iceland, but the ice, which surrounds it, or other unknown causes, make it now pass for inaccessable. Yet it was chiefly on this coast, that the Norwegians formerly established a colony, as we shall show hereafter: a colony which at this time is either destroyed, or perhaps only neglected, and cut off from all communication with the rest of the world. With regard to the western coast, which alone is frequented by
