Page:Life with the Esquimaux - 1864 - Volume 1.djvu/60

 CHAPTER II.

after we had dropped anchor, great excitement reigned on board. Some of us at once prepared for the shore, dressed in accordance with our home fashion of forty days ago, the captain and I intending to visit the governor. On landing, my heart leaped with joy as I touched the firm earth, and I could not help taking in my hands some of the rocky fragments on the beach, and saying, "Thank God, I am at last on arctic land, where I have so long wished to be! Greenland's mountains, I greet you!"

As Captain Budington had met the governor before, my introduction to him was easy. It was in the afternoon when our visit took place, and Governor Elberg received us with much kindly warmth. But the events that occurred during our stay were so various, and have been so minutely narrated in my private diary day by day, that I must try and introduce them as much together as I possibly can, first giving a brief sketch of what relates to Holsteinborg and its vicinity. The early history of Greenland is generally well known, yet a brief résumé of it may not be uninteresting to the reader. In many respects it borders upon romance, as indeed all the old Scandinavian chronicles do, but well-attested facts state nearly as follows:

About the middle of the tenth century, one Gunbiörn, an inhabitant of the previously-settled Iceland, discovered land