Godske Lindenau remained three days in the road, but it is not said that he once went ashore. He was probably afraid of trusting the lives of the small number of persons he had with him in the midst of such a mass of savages, by whom they were so greatly outnumbered.
He took his departure upon the fourth day; but before he set sail he secured two of the natives on board his ship in order to carry them to Denmark; but they made so many violent efforts to escape, that it became necessary to secure them by cords in order to prevent them from plunging into the sea. When the savages upon the beach saw two of their countrymen made prisoners and fastened to the deck of the Danish vessel, they discharged a shower of stones and arrows upon the Danes, who were obliged to terrify them to a distance by firing off one of their great guns. The admiral returned to Denmark by himself, without knowing what had befallen the other two ships, with which he had originally embarked.
The Danish account of this expedition says, that the English captain with the two Danish vessels, which had separated from that under Lindenau, reached the coast at the Southern extremity of Greenland, or Cape Farewell. It is also certain that the English commander entered Davis’s Straits, and coasted along the shore to the East. He discovered a number of good harbours, a fine country, and verdant plains. The savages in this part of Greenland carried on some traffic with him; as those upon the other side had done with Lindenau; but they exhibited more distrust; for they had no sooner received the Danish commodities in exchange for their own than they took to their boats with as much precipitation as if they were pursued by an enemy.
The Danes armed themselves for the purpose of making a landing in one of the bays. The soil, where they went ashore, appeared to be a mixture of sand and rock, like that of Norway. Some fumes exhaled from the earth made them suppose that there were mines of sulphur in the neighbourhood; and they found many pieces of silver ore, which yielded twenty-six ounces of silver to the hundred weight of ore.
The English captain, who discovered many fine harbours or bays along this coast, gave them Danish names, and before his departure made a chart of what he had seen. He also directed four of the best formed savages, whom the Danes could seize, to be conveyed on board his ship. One of these four natives became so outrageous, that the Danes, not being able to haul him along, knocked him on the head with the but end of their muskets. This intimidated the three others, who followed without farther resistance.