Nor as He in the temple taught, When blind, and deaf, and dumb were brought, Yet here, when two or three shall meet, And hear from Him the joyful sound. IN TIME OF PESTILENCE. LET the land mourn through all its coasts, Princes and rulers at their posts Awhile sit desolate. Let the whole people, high and low, The Maker of them all. For GOD hath summoned from his place To waken, warn, and scourge our race, Let churches weep within their pale, Let each in secresy bewail The plague of his own heart. So, while the land bemoans its sin, And mercy, tempering wrath, bring in UNIVERSAL ADORATION. FALL down, ye nations, and adore Let hallelujahs to the skies, Come from the West, the bond, the free; Like halcyon-nests, in GOD rejoice. Come from the South; through desert sands And Libya pour her soul in prayer. Come from the North; let Europe raise Give GOD the glory, power, and praise, For He hath bowed the heavens above, With smiles, O earth! thy Maker meet; SABBATH WORSHIP. THOUSANDS, O LORD of Hosts! this day And tens of thousands throng to pay They see Thy power and glory there, They read, they hear, they join in prayer, They sing Thy deeds, as I have sung, For Thou art in their midst to teach, I, of such fellowship bereft, In spirit turn to Thee; Oh! hast Thou not a blessing left, The dew lies thick upon the ground, The manna rains from heaven around, Behold Thy prisoner;-loose my bands, I may not to Thy courts repair, To faith reveal the things unseen; Let love, without a veil between, Oh, make Thy face on me to shine, JERUSALEM. DAUGHTER of Zion, from the dust Again in thy Redeemer trust, He calls thee from the dead. An Icelander, named Bioern, in the year 1001, following his father, who had emigrated to Greenland, is said to have been driven by a storm to the south-west, where he discovered a fine champaign country covered with forests. He did not tarry long there, but made the best of his way back again, north-east, for Greenland, which he reached in safety. The tidings of his adventure being rumoured abroad there, one Leif, the son of Eric the Red, a famous navigator, being ambitious of acquiring fame by discovering and planting new lands, fitted out a vessel, with thirty-five men, and sailed, with Bioern on board, in search of the south-west country. They arrived, in due time, at a low woody coast, and sailed up a river to a spacious lake, which communicated by it with the sea. The soil was exceedingly fruitful, the waters abounded with fish, particularly salmon, and the climate was mild. Leif and his party wintered there, and observed that on the shortest day the sun rose about eight o'clock, which may correspond with the forty-ninth degree of latitude, and denotes the situation of Newfoundland, or the river St. Lawrence in Canada. When they had built their huts, after landing, they one day missed a German mariner named Tyrker, whom, after a long search, they found in the woods, dancing with delight. On being asked what made him so merry, he answered that he had been eating such grapes of which wine was made in his native country. When Leif saw and tasted the fruit himself, he called the new region Vünland, or Wineland. Crantz, who gives this account, on various authorities, adds in a note, that well-flavoured wild grapes are known to grow in the forests of Canada, but no good wine has been produced from them." After the return of Leif to Greenland, many voyages were undertaken to Wineland, and some colonies established there. One Thorfin, an Icelander, who had married a Greenland heiress, Gudrid, the widow of the third son of Eric the Red, by whom he obtained the inheritance of Wineland, ventured thither with sixty-five men and five women; taking cattle and implements of husbandry with them for the purpose of building and planting. The natives (probably the Esquimaux) found them thus settled, and were glad to barter with their furs and skins in exchange for iron instruments, &c. One of these barbarians, however, having stolen an axe, was dolt enough to try its edge on his companion's skull, which cost the poor wretch his life; whereupon a third, wiser than either, threw the murderous weapon into the sea. Commerce with Wineland is reported to have been carried on for upwards of a hundred years afterwards. 22 Page 163. They come we see not how, nor know we whence. The ancestors of the modern inhabitants first appeared on the western coast of Greenland in the fourteenth century, and are generally supposed to have overpowered the few Norwegians scattered in that quarter. They were called Skraellings, a word of uncertain etymology, but most probably a corruption of Karallit or People, by which they designated themselves. Of their origin nothing can be ascertained. It scems on the whole not incredible (from evidence and arguments which need not be quoted here) that they are the descendants of Tartarean rovers, gradually emigrating from the heart of Asia, crossing over into West America, traversing the northern latitudes of that continent, and settling or wandering, as suited their convenience, till the foremost hordes reached Canada and Labrador; from whence the first Skraellings may have found a passage, by land or sea, to Greenland. That the Greenlanders are of the same stock with the Esquimaux, is obvious from the remarkable correspondence between their persons, dress, habitations, boats, and implements of hunting and fishing, as well as the similarity of manners, customs, superstitions, and language. Of these more may be said hereafter, should the poem of Greenland ever be completed. Meanwhile, the slight sketch given in the context may suffice. The following description of a Greenlander's fishing-boat, or kayak, will, however, be useful to illustrate the passage. The kayak is six yards in length, pointed at the head and stern, and shaped like a weaver's shuttle; it is at the same time scarcely a foot and a half broad over the middle, and not more than a foot deep. It is built of a slender skeleton of wood, consisting of a keel, and long side-laths, with cross-ribs, like hoops, but not quite round. The whole is covered with seal's skin. In the middle of this covering there is a round aperture, supported with a strong rim of wood or bone. The Greenlander slips into the cavity with his feet, and sits down upon a board covered with soft skin; he then tucks his water-pelt, or great-coat, so tight about him (the rim of the opening forming a girdle round his loins) that no water can penetrate into his little skiff. His lance, harpoon, and fishing tackle are all arranged in due order before him. His pautik, or oar (made of red deal, and strengthened with bone inlaid), Le uses with admirable dexterity. This, except when he is using his weapons, he grasps with both hands in the middle, striking the water on either side alternately, by which means he can sail at the rate of twenty or even twenty-four leagues a day. In his kayak the Greenlander fears no storm, so long as he can keep his oar, which enables him to sit upright among the roughest breakers, or if overturned, while the head is downward under water, with one stroke he can recover himself; but if he loses his oar, in a high sea, he loses all. No European has ever yet been able to learn to manage a kayak except in calm weather, and when he had nothing to do but to row. To fish in it has been found impracticable to any but the natives themselves, trained from their infancy to all the hardy exercises, which constituted, before the introduction of Christianity, the whole education of the poor barbarians. 23 Page 164. How in their march the nobler Normans fell. The incidents alluded to in this clause are presumed to have occasioned the extinction of the Norwegian colonists on the western coast of Greenland. Crantz says that there is a district on Ball's River called Pissiksarbik, or the "place of arrows," where it is believed that the Skraellings and Norwegians fought a battle, in which the latter were defeated. The modern Greenlanders affirm that the name is derived from the circumstance of the parties having shot their arrows at one another from opposite banks of the stream. Many rudera, or ruins of ancient buildings, principally supposed to have been churches, are found along the coast from Disco Bay to Cape Farewell. 24 Page 172. Of billows round immeasurable space. The principal phenomena, described in this disruption of so immense a breadth of ice, are introduced on the authority of an authentic narrative of a journey on sledges, along the coast of Labrador, by two Moravian missionaries and a number of Esquimaux, in the year 1782. The first incident in Canto V., the destruction of the snow-house, is partly borrowed from the same record. 25 Page 172. No lovelier pageant moves beneath the sky. The icebergs, both fixed and floating, present the most fantastic and magnificent forms, which an active imagination may easily convert into landscape scenery. Crantz says that some of these look like churches, with pillars, arches, portals, and illuminated windows; others like castles, with square and spiral turrets. A third class assume the appearance of ships in full sail, to which pilots have occasionally gone out, for the purpose of conducting them into harbour; many again resemble large islands, with hill and dale, as well as villages, and even cities, built upon the margin of the sea. Two of these stood for many years in Disco Bay, which the Dutch whalers called Amsterdam and Haarlem. 26 Page 173. That crisis comes: the wafted fuel fails. Greenland has been supplied with fuel, from time immemorial, brought by the tide from the northern shores of Asia, and other regions, probably even from California, and the coast of America towards Behring's Straits. This annual provision, however, has gradually been decreasing for some years past (being partly intercepted by the accumulation of ice) on the shores of modern Greenland towards Davis's Straits. Should it fail altogether, that country (like the east) must become uninhabitable; as the natives themselves employ wood in the construction of their houses, their boats, and their implements of fishing, hunting, and shooting, and could not find any adequate substitute for it at home. 27 Page 177. Looked on yon father, and gave up the ghost. The "Danish Chronicle" says that the Greenland colonists were tributary to the kings of Norway from the year 1023; soon after which they embraced Christianity. In its |