orts of
comforts, taking in exchange fish ... and skins of different kinds of
animals.... There are continually in the harbour a number of vessels
detained by the sea being frozen, and waiting for the next season to
melt the ice."[292]

[Footnote 289: So he tells us himself: "Quo cum venissent,
nullum hominem, neque christianum neque paganum, invenerunt,
tantummodo fera pecora et oves deprehenderunt, ex quibus
quantum naves ferre poterant in has deportato domum redierunt."
_Descriptio Groenlandiae_, apud Major, p. 53. The glacial men
had done their work of slaughter and vanished.]

[Footnote 290: "Ma la maggior parte sono delle Islande." Mr.
Major is clearly wrong in translating it "from the Shetland
Isles." The younger Nicolo was puzzled by the similarity of the
names Islanda and Eslanda, and sometimes confounded Iceland
with the Shetland group. But in this place Iceland is evidently
meant.]

[Footnote 291: This application of the hot water to purposes of
gardening reminds us of the similar covered gardens or hot-beds
constructed by Albertus Magnus in the Dominican monastery at
Cologne in the thirteenth century. See Humboldt's _Kosmos_, ii.
130.]

[Footnote 292: Major, _op. cit._ p. 16. The narrative goes on
to give a description of the skin-boats of the Eskimo
fishermen.]

[Sidenote: Volcanoes of the north Atlantic ridge.]

[Sidenote: Fate of Gunnbjoern's Skerries, 1456.]

[Sidenote: Volcanic phenomena in Greenland.]

This mention of the volcano and the hot spring is very interesting. In
the Miocene period the Atlantic ridge was one of the principal seats of
volcanic activity upon the globe; the line of volcanoes extended all the
way from Greenland down into central France. But for several hundred
thousand years this activity has been diminishing. In France, in the
western parts of Great Britain and the Hebrides, the craters have long
since become extinct. In the far North, however, volcanic action has
been slower in dying out. Iceland, with no less than twenty active
volcanoes, is still the most considerable centre of such operations in
Europe. The huge volcano on Jan Mayen island, between Greenland and
Spitzbergen, is still in action. Among the submerged peaks in the
northern seas explosions still now and then occur, as in 1783,