Page:Journal of a Voyage to Greenland, in the Year 1821.djvu/201

Rh in a wooden fort, the different pieces of which they carried out in the transports. They met with boisterous weather, impenetrable fogs, and violent currents, which retarded their operations until the season was too far advanced. The Admiral therefore determined to return with as much ore as he could procure: of this they obtained large quantities out of a new mine, to which they gave the name of the Countess of Sussex. They set sail in the beginning of September, and after a month's stormy passage, arrived in England; but this adventure was never after prosecuted.

Thus stood the affairs of Greenland, when Hans Egede, minister of Vogen in Norway, prompted by a laudable zeal to promote the knowledge of Christ among the savage Greenlanders, made some proposals for renewing the intercourse between Denmark and Norway, and Greenland, which had been discontinued for many centuries. Most of the friends and acquaintances of this worthy divine, when they heard of his project, looked upon it as a chimerical undertaking. However, in 1718, he resigned his benefice in the south part of Norway, and removed with his wife and children to Bergen. His proposals did not meet with a favourable reception, either from the merchants or clergy of that city; he therefore went to Copenhagen in 1719, and laid his plan before the king; who sent an order to the magistrates of Bergen, to propose to the citizens the erecting of a Greenland company. This, after many difficulties, was at last effected