His lack of knowledge of the conditions in Greenland appears again in his speaking of Pygmies and Karelians as two different peoples, one apparently on the sea, and the other marching in armies on land; and in his mentioning hide-boats as something peculiar to the former in the fabulous northern country, while he does not say that the Karelians in Greenland had boats or went to sea. If he had only spoken to people who had been in Greenland, he could hardly have avoided hearing of the Skrælings who come to meet every traveller in their hide-boats.
[Illustration: Map constructed by Dr. Björnbo after Clavus's later description (the Vienna text). (Björnbo and Petersen, 1904, Pl. II.)]
[Sidenote: Clavus's west coast of Greenland taken directly from the Medici map]
It is an important difference between Clavus's first and second maps (and also between his first and second texts) that on the latter Greenland is given a west coast. Its form bears an altogether striking resemblance to the west coast of the corresponding peninsula on the Medicean mappamundi, so that there can be no doubt that this coast is copied from it.[263] This is notably the case if we confine ourselves to Björnbo and Petersen's reconstruction of the coast after the text of Clavus, from which it appears plainly enough that there are the same number of bays as on the Medici map; they are closest together near the southern point of the country; then come two larger bays to the north, then a very broad bay, longer than the two others together, and then a straighter coast-line to the north of that (cf. p. 236). The east coast of Greenland has in part been provided with corresponding bays, although this coast is almost straight on the Medici map; but this answers to the north coast of Scandinavia on the Nancy map having very nearly the same indentations as the south coast. In taking the Medici map as the foundation of Clavus's Greenland coast we also have a natural explanation of the relation between his distribution of names on the east coast and the west. In his later text it is striking that his description of the east coast of Greenland does not reach farther than to his "Thær promontorium" in 65° 35', while the description of the west coast goes as far north as 72°. This might seem to be connected with real local knowledge, since the latitude 65° 35' on the east coast agrees in a remarkable way with the latitude of Cape Dan, 65° 32', where the coast turns in a more northerly direction. To the north of this the coast is usually blocked with ice, and this place has therefore frequently been given as the northern limit of the known east coast, and probably it was there that the Icelanders first arrived off the land on their voyage westward to the Greenland settlements. But this is one of those accidental coincidences that sometimes occur, and that warn us to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from evidence of this nature.[264] We find the explanation in the Medici map (p. 236), where the east coast of the peninsula corresponding to Greenland does not go farther north than to about the same latitude as the promontory on the south side of the broad bay already referred to on the west coast, which promontory Clavus calls "Hynth" ["Hyrch"]; it lies in 65° 40'. As Clavus's coast from this point of the east coast northward had no map to depend on, he did not venture to go farther in his description this time, though in the Nancy text he goes to 71° with his northernmost cape.