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>« the Western Arctic Sea. 7 LETTER III. My bear Brother, At Sea, 30th May, 1819. I now send to you, as I promised, some heads relative to the early state of these northern regions, among which you will find several things which will he new to you, and which may furnish subjects for conversation in the happy circle in * street. Chronology and geography are described as the two eyes of history : both shall therefore be kept open in what I have to state. About A.D. 500, according to the Icelandic historians, some Irish monks, whether by accident or by design, arrived in Ice land ; wafted over the northern ocean in fourteen days, in their coracles, or wicker boats, covered with hides. Books in the an cient Irish language, bells, &c. were found in the island, on the arrival of the earliest settlers from Norway. A.D. S90.—Harold Harfagur, the first king of all Norway, having conquered all his rivals, or usurped the chief power, com pelled many bodies of the people to quit their native land. Re sorting to their ships, they formed settlements in the most remote parts of the North. Of those colonies, the most distinguished was established in Iceland, which had been accidentally visited in 861, and occupied in 878. This colony, if we except those of the ancient Greeks, is the only colony in the world, prior to the comparatively late settlements of Europeans in America, of which a regular account has been preserved from its commencement to the present time. Towards the beginning of the tenth century, the Icelanders established a colony in Greenland, which increased and prospered for nearly four hundred years. Then the intercourse between that region and the rest of the world was interrupted, by the in creasing severity of the climate, and the unfortunate colonists were no more heard of. Navigators of the present age, who depend on the assistance of the compass and quadrant j who are furnished with arithmetical and mathematical tables, calculated with the greatest nicety ; must be astonished at the daring spirit of these adventurous sons of the Northern Seas, who were un questionably destitute of those aids. It is related by an Icelandic historian, that when Flok, a fa mous Norwegian navigator, was preparing to set out from the isles of Hialtland, now called Zetland or Shetland, on the north of Scotland, on a voyage to Iceland, then named Gardarsholm, he took on board as guides, some crows, because the manner’s com-