at first to be unconscious of the fact, and continues to swim against it, and then allows the boat to approach it from behind. If entangled in the net, it is soon drowned, as, like all the whale tribe, it is obliged to come to the surface to breathe.

A large quantity of cod are caught in various parts of the South Inspectorate, particularly at Fiskernasset, which, being less subject to fogs and more exposed to the sea-wind, offers peculiar advantages for the drying of the fish. The capelin (Mallotus villosus), which in May and June visits the coasts of Greenland in great numbers, is eaten both fresh or laid upon the rocks to dry for the winter. The sea-wolf, the lump-fish, the bull-head, the Norway haddock, the salmon-trout, are likewise important articles of food. The halibut grows to a huge size, and a smaller species (Hippoglossus pinguis) is fished for at the depth of 180 or even 380 fathoms. The banks frequented by this fish are most valuable to the neighboring Greenlanders. Many are no doubt still undiscovered, others may be known by the dead fish floating on the surface, or by the seals diving out of the water with a flat fish in their mouth. Long-tailed crabs are easily caught in many parts, and the common mussel may be gathered almost everywhere at ebb tide.

Crowds of birds nestle during the summer on the rocky shores, particularly at Upernavik, where the largest breeding-places are found. They are generally killed with small blunted arrows. In the ice-fjord of Jacobshavn the gulls are caught ingeniously by floating traps on which something brilliant or resembling a fish is fixed. The eggs of the sea-birds are gathered in vast numbers, and the feathers and skins of the eider-duck and auk are both exported and used for the lining of boots.

Compared with the wealth of the seas, the land is very poor. The chase of the reindeer is, however, important, as its skin affords both a warmer and a softer clothing than that of the seal, and serves moreover as a bed-cover or a sledge-carpet. Reindeer-hunting is a favorite summer occupation of the Greenlanders, who annually kill from 10,000 to 20,000, and export about one-half of the skins. Only a few cows, sheep, and goats are kept at Julianshaab. For want of hay they are fed with fish during the winter. In South Greenland the potato is cultivated by the European residents as a luxury. The plant never flowers, and even buds are rare. Turnips, cabbages, salad, and spinach likewise grow in South Greenland, but barley sown in the gardens scarcely ever comes to ear. In summer the windows of the houses are gay with geraniums and fuchsias and other flowers of a more temperate zone.

Among the indigenous plants, the berries of the Empetrum nigrum, Vaccinium uliginosum, and Vaccinium vitis idea furnish the Greenlanders with their only vegetable food. While the coasts exposed to the bleak sea-winds. afford scanty traces of vegetation, the valleys and hill slopes of the more sheltered fjords are green during the summer, and justify the name bestowed by Erick on the land of his adoption. Forests are of course out of the question in Greenland, though in some places the birch attains a not inconsiderable size. Thus in a dell at the upper end of Lichtenau Fjord a ticket of these trees, fifteen feet high, surrounds a little lake fed by a waterfall, the largest

hitherto known in Greenland. More generally, however, the trees, such as the beech, the willow, the elder, etc., merely creep along the ground, where the dense matting of their roots and branches, mingled with bushes of the empetrum, or with mosses, lichens, and fallen leaves, forms a kind of turf which is used as fuel by the Danes.

In some measure the sea makes up for the want of timber by casting on the shore a quantity of drift-wood, the origin of which is still a matter of doubt, some tracing it to the North American rivers, others to those of Siberia. It consists mostly of the uprooted trunks of coniferous trees. Sometimes also large pieces of bark, such as those of which the Indians make their canoes, and sewn together with threads of hair, and drifted into the fjords.

The mineral kingdom, though it has within the last few years attracted the attention of speculators, will hardly ever realize their hopes. Several attempts. to work the lead and copper ores at Nanursoak and in the Arksak fjord have miserably failed. The cost of transport is immense, and the difficulty of obtaining the necessary workmen presents an insuperable obstacle to all mining operations in Greenland.

Though the Greenlanders have now been for more than a century under the influence of Christian teachers, yet their mode of life is still much the same as that of their relatives the wild Esquimaux on the opposite continent of North America. Like them, they use the "kayak," the "oomiak," and the sledge; like them, they live in small winter huts of stone (the snow-house is unknown to them) or in summer tents hung with skins, and they are equally improvident in times of abundance. Their constant intercourse with Europeans has, however, taught them the use of many luxuries unknown to the wild Esquimaux, and they are now great consumers of coffee. They are fond of instruction, but the immense space over which the population is scattered, and their vagrant life during a great part of the year, are great hinderances to their improvement. They are also very good-natured, and live on the best terms with the Danes who reside among them. The latter, who, with the exception of the Moravian missionaries, are all in the service of the Company, soon get attached to the country, and leave it with regret; sometimes even returning to close their days in Greenland.

The climate, though severe, is very healthy, and the lover of sport finds ample opportunities for gratifying his favorite passion. In September, or at the beginning of October, the last ships leave for Europe; and then, till the next April or May-when the first English whalers appear in the ports of Godhavn or Upernavik-all communication with the civilized world is totally cut off. Towards the end of January or the beginning of February, when the days begin rapidly to lengthen, frequent sledge-parties keep up a constant interchange of visits between the various settlements. This mode of travelling over the lakes and inclosed fjords is very agreeable in May, as then the sun is pleasantly warm at noon; and though he hardly disappears below the horizon, the nights are sufficiently cold to convert the melted snow into ice hard enough to bear the weight of a sledge. This is the best time for visiting many interesting spots inaccessible at other seasons of the year, and for enjoying many a scene

unsurpassed in Switzerland itself. Here, as on the Alps, the glacier and the snow-clad peak appear in all their grandeur; here also, in the valleys, the summer brooks flow between well-clothed banks, and the Helvetian lakes are worthily rivalled by the magnificent fjords of Greenland.

In many parts, the waves, beating against the steep coasts of the islands. and fjords, render access difficult, if not impossible during the summer, but in winter or spring they may easily be visited across the ice. The surf has worn many caves in these precipitous rock-walls, which are no less remarkable for their picturesque basaltic forms than for the huge masses of ice on their sides, which, in their tints and grouping, far surpass the stalactites of the most renowned European grottoes.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN.

Comparative View of the Antarctic and Arctic Regions.-Inferiority of Climate of the former.-Its Causes.-The New Shetland Islands.--South Georgia.-The Peruvian Stream.-Sea-birds.-The Giant Petrel.-The Albatross.-The Penguin.-The Austral Whale.-The Hunchback.-The Fin-back. -The Grampus.-Battle with a Whale.-The Sea-elephant.-The Southern Sea-bear.-The Sealeopard.-Antarctic Fishes.

THE

HE Antarctic regions are far more desolate and barren than the Arctic. Here we have no energetic hunters, like the Esquimaux, chasing the seal or the walrus; no herdsmen following, like the Samoïedes or the Lapps, their reindeer to the brink of the icy ocean; but all is one dreary, uninhabitable waste. While within the Arctic Circle the musk-ox enjoys an abundance of food, and the lemming is still found thriving on the bleakest islands, not a single land quadruped exists beyond 56° of southern latitude.

Summer flowers gladden the sight of the Arctic navigator in the most northern lands yet reached; but no plant of any description-not even a moss or a lichen has been observed beyond Cockburn Island in 64° 12' S. lat.; and while even in Spitzbergen vegetation. ascends the mountain slopes to a height of 3000 feet the snow-line descends to the water's edge in every land within or near the Antarctic Circle.

An open sea, extending towards the northern pole as far as the eye can reach, points out the path to future discovery; but the Antarctic navigators, with one single exception, have invariably seen their progress arrested by barriers of ice, and none have ever penetrated beyond the comparatively low latitude of 78° 10'.

Even in Spitzbergen and East Greenland, Scoresby sometimes found the heat of summer very great; but the annals of Antarctic navigation invariably speak of a frigid temperature. In 1773, when Captain Phipps visited Spitzbergen, the thermometer once rose to +581°; and on July 15, 1820, when the "Hecla " left her winter-quarters in Melville Island (74° 47′ N.), she enjoyed a warmth of +56°. But during the summer months spent by Sir James Ross in the Antarctic Polar area, the temperature of the air never once exceeded +41°5'. In Northumberland Sound (76° 42′ N.), probably the coldest spot hitherto visited in the north, the mean of the three summer months was found to be +30° 8', while within the Antarctic Circle it only amounted to +27° 3'. The reader may possibly wonder why the climate of the southern polar regions is so much more severe than that of the high northern latitudes; or why coasts and valleys, at equal distances from the equator, should in one case be found green with vegetation, and in another mere wastes of snow and ice; but the predominance of land in the north, and of sea in the south, fully answers

the question. Within the Arctic Circle we see vast continental masses projecting far to the north, so as to form an almost continuous belt round the icy sea; while in the southern hemisphere, the continents taper down in a vast extent of open ocean. In the north, the plains of Siberia and of the Hudson's Bay territories, warmed by the sunbeams of summer, become at that season centres of radiating heat, so that in many parts the growth of forests, or even the culture of the cereals, advances as high as 70° of latitude; while the Antarctic lands are of a comparatively small extent, and isolated in the midst of frigid waters, whose temperature scarcely varies from +29° 2' even in the height of summer. Mostly situated within the Antarctic Circle, and constantly chilled by cold sea-winds, they act at every season as refrigerators of the atmosphere.

In the north, the formation of icebergs is confined to a few mountainous. countries, such as the west coast of Greenland or Spitzbergen; but the Antarctic coast-lands generally tower to a considerable height above the level of the sea, and the vast fragments which are constantly detaching themselves from their glaciers keep up the low temperature of the seas.

In the north, the cold currènts of the Polar Ocean, with their drift-ice and bergs, have but the two wide gates of the Greenland Sea and Davis's Strait through which they can emerge to the south, so that their influence is confined within comparatively narrow limits, while the gelid streams of the Antarctic seas branch out freely on all sides, and convey their floating ice-masses far and wide within the temperate seas. It is only to the west of Newfoundland that single icebergs have ever been known to descend as low as 39° of latitude; but in the southern hemisphere they have been met with in the vicinity of the Cape of Good Hope (35° S. lat.), near Tristan d'Acunha, opposite to the mouth of the Rio de la Plata, and within a hundred leagues of Tasmania. In the north, finally, we find the Gulf Stream conveying warmth even to the shores of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla; while in the opposite regions of the globe, no traces of warm currents have been observed beyond 55° of latitude.

Thus the predominance of vast tracts of flat land in the boreal hemisphere, and of an immense expanse of ocean in the Antarctic regions, sufficiently accounts for the æstival warmth of the former, and the comparatively low summer temperature of the latter.

It is unnecessary to describe in detail each of the desolate lands which modern navigators have discovered among the Antarctic ice-fields, but it may not be uninteresting to compare one or two of these dreary wastes with the lands. of the north, situated in analogous latitudes.

The New Shetland Islands, situated between 61° and 63° of Southern latitude, were originally discovered by Dirck Gheritz, a Dutch navigator, who, in attempting to round Cape Horn, was carried by tempestuous weather within sight of their mountainous coasts. Long forgotten, they were re-discovered in 1819 by Mr. Smith, a master in the royal navy-whom a storm had likewise earried thither-and in the following year more accurately examined by Edward Bransfield, whose name survives in the strait which separates them from D'Urville's Louis Philippe Land.