THE ESKIMOS 113 After that nothing is certainly known. There are two papal letters at different periods of the century, based on very ques- tionable hearsay information and indicating confusion and gen- eral falling away. There was even a futile effort to reopen communication in 1492. Probably by that time the Norsemen and Norse women were all dead or married to the Eskimos. That particular form of primitive heathendom seems to have absorbed them. Greenland was to be rediscovered and repeopled in due season ; but for the time being it had become in European knowledge only a half-forgotten figure on certain maps, sometimes given with fair accuracy of outline but sometimes also as an oceanic Green Island of only indirect relation to reality and passing its name on to little islands and even fancied rocks far at sea, which owned nothing in common with the far northern region except a part of its name.
