vidence. It is not likely that it
will ever be possible to determine whether the settlement owed its final
destruction to the irruptions of the Eskimos, "to the ravages of
pestilence, to the enforced neglect of the mother country--itself during
the fifteenth century too often in sore straits--to the iniquitous
restrictions in commerce imposed by the home government, or to a
combination of several of these evils." There was a regular succession of
bishops from 1124 to the end of the fourteenth, or perhaps the beginning
of the fifteenth century.

[73-1] Addressed to the two bishops of Skalholt and Holar, in Iceland.

[73-2] The Archbishop of Drontheim in Norway.

[73-3] Alexander VI. was pope from 1492 to 1503.

[74-1] Evidently this is only an approximate statement.

[74-2] There are no records that this man ever reached either Greenland
or Iceland. The Greenland colony was not entirely forgotten by the home
government (Denmark-Norway). In the beginning of the sixteenth century,
Archbishop Valkendorf of Drontheim had agitated the question of searching
for the Greenland colony. During the reign of Frederick II. of
Denmark-Norway, Mogens Heinesen was in 1579 sent out, but he did not
reach the island. The Englishman John Davis, in 1585, visited the western
coast of Greenland, but found no Europeans.

ORIGINAL NARRATIVES OF THE VOYAGES OF COLUMBUS

ARTICLES OF AGREEMENT BETWEEN THE LORDS THE CATHOLIC SOVEREIGNS AND
CRISTOBAL COLON[77-1]

The things prayed for, and which Your Highnesses give and grant to Don
Cristobal Colon[77-2] as some recompense for what he is to discover in
the Oceans, and for the voyage which now, with the help of God, he has
engaged to make therein in the service of Your Highnesses, are the
following:

Firstly, that Your Highnesses, as actual Lords of the said Oceans,
appoint from this date the said Don Cristobal Colon to be your Admiral in
all those islands and mainlands which by his activity and industry shall
be discovered or acquired in the said oceans, during his lifetime, and
likewise, after his death, his heirs and successors one after another in
perpetuity, with all the pre-eminences and prerogatives appertaining to
the said office, and in the same manner as Don Alfonso Enriques, your
High Admiral of Castile,[78-1] and his predecessors in the said office
held it in their districts.--It so pleases their Highnesses. Juan de
Coloma.

Likewise, that Your Highnesses appoint