150 THE VEGETATION OF NORTH GREENLAND. 
Berries are the only vegetable food which the Greenlanders use in any - 
quantity, and of these only one of the three existing species, namely the 
Krekke-berry, Empetrum nigrum. Nature provides for the preservation 
of this fruit through the year, in this cold climate, in a remarkable 
manner. It is obvious that there is scanty summer-warmth to bring 
to perfection such fruits as contain nourishment as well as acid and 
saccharine elements, and that but a short space of time can intervene 
between their ripening and the winter’s frost*. It was regarded as an 
unusual exception, that in the warm summer of 1850, ripe Krække- 
berries were found by the Waigate in the middle of July. They are 
pretty generally ripe in the beginning of August, and ‘after the 20th of 
this month begin the night-frosts, which stop all further advance, but 
at the same time hinder decay ; in the following month an overspread- 
ing covering of snow prevents their drying up, and keeps them un- 
changed, till the warmth of the following summer again melts the snow 
in the month of May. Some winters but little snow falls: then the 
Greenlanders can in some places furnish themselves with berries all the 
season; as, for instance, I observed at Jakobshavn in 1850-51, that 
the women and children used to go out to collect them and return with 
baskets full; they have indeed an implement for getting them up out of 
the snow. Most are gathered in the autumn, and in May; and of their 
immense numbers on the coasts which look eastward, we have already 
spoken in our account of the weather in 1850, but the warmth of sum- 
mer has less influence on this sort of berry than on any other, and there 
is scarcely a year in which it is not abundant. The Krekke bush may 
be considered the most widely-spread of all the plants of North Green- 
land, and as composing the larger portion of its vegetation. As to the 
quantity of fruit, there is a great difference whether it grows on an 
eastern or western aspect. They are regularly used in the autumn, as 
a kind of dessert after the customary meal of seals’ flesh; they are set 
out, like this, in a dish, on the floor, mixed with small pieces of 
* The fine summer (of 1850) produced its effect in the unusual quantity of berries 
in the district east of Disko Bay, in the months of August and September. The 
Kriekke-berries, which are the most common, were so full of fruit, that they were like 
bunches of grapes, and the ground which they covered was black. The Blackberries, 
which require more favouring circumstances to bring them to ripeness, but the plants 
of which are plentiful, were this year almost as abundant as the former, and remark- 
ably large and sweet. The Tytte-berries, which are only found in certain parts of 
North Greenland, only ripening in certain seasons, were also in fair quantity along 
the south-east bays. » 3 i 
