GREENLEAF GREEN MOUNTAINS 235 far more habitable than at present. The early chroniclers, too, make very little mention of ice, and there are evidences that the soil bore more generously in those days. Eric found no indigenous race, and he and his followers be- came the sole tenants of the land. The several settlements around Ericsfiord were called col- lectively Ostre Bygd (East country), and the more northerly plantations Westre Bygd (West country). At one time there were more than 300 farms and villages between Disco and Cape Farewell. Churches and monasteries were built, and in the 12th century Greenland was erected into a bishopric, it having been pre- viously a dependency of the see of Iceland. Seventeen successive bishops held the see of Gardar, the last of whom was consecrated in 1406. No Esquimaux (Skralinger) are men- ioned by the chroniclers until the 14th cen- iry, when Thorwald saw them on the coast
- Labrador. Toward the middle of this cen-
tury a horde of Skralinger appeared on the borders of the Westre Bygd, and 18 Norsemen were killed in an encounter with them. When the news reached the Ostre Bygd in 1349, Ivar Beer went with a force to the rescue ; but he found only the ruins of the colony. Toward | the close of the 14th century Greenland was visited by Nicol6 Zeno, a Venetian navigator. Tn 1409 the bishop's see was abandoned. A letter from Pope Nicholas V. to the bishop of Iceland, written in 1448, mentions the descent )f a hostile fleet on the coast about 30 years jfore, which laid waste the country with fire id sword, so that the organization of the lonies was destroyed ; and we hear no more Greenland until the time of the Elizabethan ivigators. In 1576 Martin Frobisher, sailing quest of a N. W. passage to China, came in jht of the E. coast in lat. 61, and rounded ipe Farewell. Other navigators followed, id attempts were made to recover the lost >lonies during the succeeding century ; but it T&S not till 1721, when the Danish missionary Tans Egede established himself at Godthaab, iat any success was attained. The Moravian lissions were founded soon after, and the set- mients have since continued to grow. Even le sites of the ancient colonies were unknown itil a recent period. In 1829 the king of >enmark sent an expedition under Capt. Graah a determine the site of the Ostre Bygd, which ras supposed to be on the E. coast, the ruins Igalliko fiord being taken for those of the r estre Bygd. He found reasons for believing iat both settlements were on the W. coast, id within a few years it has been demonstra- ~ beyond a doubt that Igalliko fiord, or Erics- >rd, was the site of Eric's long lost colony. GREENLEAF, Simon, an American jurist, born Newburyport, Mass., Dec. 5, 1783, died in Cambridge, Oct. 6, 1853. He practised law in [assachusetts and afterward in Maine, was re- nter of the supreme court of Maine from 1820 to 1832, and during this period published ine volumes of reports, and a treatise on the " Origin and Principles of Free-Masonry " (Portland, 1820). In 1833 he became professor of law in Harvard university, and held this office till 1848. In 1840 he published a volume of "Overruled, Denied, and Doubted Deci- sions and Dicta," which was expanded in sub- sequent editions to three volumes. In 1846 he published an "Examination of the Testimony of the Four Evangelists, by the Rules of Evi- dence as administered in Courts of Justice, with an Account of the Trial of Jesus." In 1849 he published an edition of Cruise's "Di- gest of the Law of Real Property." But his great work was a "Treatise on the Law of Evidence " (3 vols., 1842-'53). GREEN MOUNTAINS, the northernmost por- tion of the Appalachian chain, extending from Canada S. through Vermont. To this state, over which they are largely spread, they give its name, from the term monts verts by which they were known to the early French settlers. The continuation of the range through Massa- chusetts and Connecticut is also known to geographers as the Green mountains, but by the inhabitants of these states other names are applied to them ; as the Hoosac mountains in Massachusetts for that portion lying between the Connecticut and Housatonic rivers, and constituting the most elevated portion of the state, and the Taconic mountains for the west- ern part of the range, along the New York line. These ranges extend into Vermont near the S. W. corner of the state, and join in a contin- uous line of hills, that pass through the west- ern portion of the state nearly to Montpelier. Without attaining very great elevation, these hills form an unbroken watershed between the affluents of the Connecticut on the east and the Hudson and Lake Champlain on the west, and about equidistant between them. South from Montpelier two ranges extend, one N. E. near- ly parallel with the Connecticut river, dividing the waters flowing E. from those flowing W. ; and the other, which is the higher and more broken, extending nearly N. and near Lake Champlain. Through this range the Onion, Lamoille, and Missisque rivers make their way toward the lake. Among the principal peaks are Mt. Mansfield, 20 m. N. W. of Mont- pelier, 4,279 ft. above the sea; Camel's Hump, 17 m. W. of Montpelier, 4,188 ft. ; Killington peak, near Rutland, 3,924 ft. ; and Ascutney, in Windsor co., near the Connecticut river, 3,320 ft. This portion of the Appalachian chain neither possesses the marked uniformity of elevation and parallelism of its ridges that characterize the same chain further S., nor has it the abruptness and precipitous outlines of the granitic summits of the White mountains. The body and eastern side of the Green mountain range is generally of primitive geological struc- ture, consisting of hornblende, granite, gneiss, &c. The rocks of the western slope are prin- cipally old red sandstone, containing iron ore and manganese. The general range of the rocks is about N. 15 E., with a prevailing dip
