he human body
are almost indestructible in that climate. Seventeen expeditions have
been sent out by the Danish and Norwegian governments in search of
this lost colony, the last of which was within the present half
century. One of these was headed by Egedi, a poor Norwegian clergyman
to whom is owing the civilization of Greenland, and of whose strange
heroic life we know too little.

There are two or three conjectures to account for the disappearance of
this colony. One is that they were all murdered by the Skroeellings.
But where are their bones? Besides, the colonists numbered from
fifteen to twenty thousand, and were much superior to the natives in
size, strength, intelligence and knowledge of war.

Graah, a Danish navigator who came in search of them in 1828, believes
that they were carried off bodily by the English after the ravages
of the "black death" in England, to repair the waste of human life,
citing a treaty of 1433 in which England was charged with abducting
Danish subjects for that end. Another theory is that the Frisian king
Zichmni carried them off captive. Pope Nicholas asserts this outrage
as a fact in a bull in 1448. But Zichmni is as uncertain a personage
in history as Demigorgon; and the good popes were not so infallible as
to matters of general news before the establishment of telegraph and
postal service as they are now.

Mr. Dalton Dorr, who accompanied Hayes, tells me that among the
Esquimaux there is a tradition that a colony of foreigners once owned
the land, and about five centuries ago emigrated in a body northward,
crossing the Mer de Glace--that they found an open sea, and somewhere
within the eternal rampart of snow and ice now dwell securely by its
shores. As early as 1500 the migratory Skroeellings told of this colony
far to the north-east. These rumors possessed substance enough to
warrant the expeditions from Denmark, which have all been directed to
the eastern coast. Graah heard from his guides of a strange people
with high features, hoarse voices and large stature living beyond the
limits passed by Europeans.

Here is a mystery surely worth finding out--a people exiled from their
kind for centuries living at the Pole--something better worth search
than even Franklin's bones. To give it reality, too, we must remember
how many Arctic explorers have caught sight, as they thought, of an
open sea near the Pole--a sea with strong, iceless swells, and on
whose shores warm rains fell.