SCORESBY'S DISCOVERIES. 



167 



were enamelled with beds of snow and ice, and in the 

 interior mountains rose beyond mountains, till they 

 melted in the distant horizon. Inc beach of this cape 



was found nearly 

 covered with the 

 nests of terns, 

 ducks, and other 

 tenants of the 

 Arctic air, in 

 some of which 



WILD DUCK. 



were young*, over 

 whom the pa- 

 rents kept watch, 

 and, by loud cries 

 and quick, vehe- 

 ment movements, 



Bought to defend them against the predatory tribes 

 which hovered round. 



But the most important discoveries made by Scoresby 

 were in 1822, when he sailed in the ship Baffin, of three 

 hundred and twenty-one tons, and fifty men, for the 

 whale fishery. In search of a better fishing-ground, he 

 was led to the eastern coast of Greenland a tract 

 absolutely unknown, unless at a few points which the 

 Dutch had approached ; and it formed a continuous line 

 with the shore on which the colonies of old Greenland, 

 the subject of much controversy, were supposed to have 

 been situated. 



On the 8th of June, in 74 6' north latitude, the coast 

 was discovered, extending from north to south about 

 ninety miles ; and of which the most northerly point 

 was concluded to be that named on the charts Gale 

 Hamkes's Land, while the most southerly appeared to 

 be Hudson's Hold-with-Hope. Scoresby's ambition, 

 however, to mount some of its crags, which no European 



