The Danish Monarch desisted from any farther attempt to discover Old Greenland; but some merchants at Copenhagen formed themselves into a Greenland Company, for the purpose of establishing a traffic with that part of the world. In 1636 this Company fitted out two ships, which visited that part of the coast of New Greenland which is washed by Davis’s Straits. When they cast anchor, eight savages came off to them in their little canoes. The Danes had displayed their knives, mirrors, and other articles upon the deck, to which the savages had also conveyed their furs, skins, and fish horns; but a gun having been inconsiderately fired, in order to celebrate the drinking of some particular health, these native traders were so frightened that they instantly leaped into the sea, from which they did not emerge till they had proceeded to two or three hundred yards from the ship.
The Danes at last succeeded in appeasing the apprehensions of the Greenlanders, and in alluring them again on board their vessels. The Danish commander having remarked an inlet of the coast where there was a bank of sand, which bore a strong resemblance to gold, his cupidity made him imagine, that he had discovered a mine of wealth. He lost no time in filling his ship with this fancied gold dust, and made the best of his way to Denmark, exulting in dreams of visionary opulence.
But the master of the Greenland Company, who was less credulous than the captain of the expedition, having caused this precious sand to be examined by the goldsmiths at Copenhagen, they were not able to extract from the whole mass a single particle of gold. The captain was accordingly ordered, to his great mortification, to throw the whole of this valuable lading into the sea.
In this last expedition to Greenland the Danes secured and carried off two of the natives before they left the coast. When they had reached the open sea, the Danes released these captives from their bonds, when, finding themselves free from restraint, the love of liberty prevailed over every other sentiment, and they plunged into the waves in order to regain their native shore. But that shore was too remote for them to reach, and they perished in the vain attempt. It is pleasant to contemplate that sentiment, which attaches us to our native land, operating alike in all regions and climes, and attaching the human being to a country of almost invincible sterility and perpetual frost, as well as to one where there are the richest products and the most genial seasons.