ABSTRACT
GREENLAND (Gruntlandia) takes the name from its battlements or high sand-banks, or, as others have it, from its greenness. 1 1 should hardly believe men’s often-repeated account of this country’s marvels, an account given to me, too, by men of some authority, who tell how the natives of this land have to wage war against large flocks of cranes, 2 if Pliny, in Bk VII, Ch. 2, where he speaks of the Scythian tribes, did not recount similar tales supported by rational arguments and by other writers. For he says in this passage: ‘Beyond the tribe of the Astomi, in the farthest part of the mountains, the Spithamaean Pygmies, who are only three spans high, that is, not taller than twenty-seven inches, are said to live. Theirs is a healthy climate where it is always spring, as the mountains face away from the north wind. Homer too reports that they are molested by cranes. The tradition is that the Pygmies, mounted on the 106backs of rams and she-goats and armed with arrows, all band together in springtime and go down to the sea, where they devour the eggs and chicks of these birds; they complete their campaign in three months, for unless they did this, they would be unable to withstand the swarms of cranes that would result in the future.’ 3
Greenland’s battlements
Spithamaean Pygmies
Homer
Eggs are devoured lest their enemies multiply
