24.8 OF THE EXPEDITION 



of the grassy green ; and the adult Uskee sleeps with 

 tranquillity and comfort on the snow : so do likewise such 

 Danes or other foreigners as accustom themselves from 

 choice or necessity to the habits of the natives. 



In a design to penetrate the arctic regions, either by the 

 eastern or western side of Greenland, primary attention 

 must be given to the nature of the ice to be met with in 

 those very ditferent waters. The accounts of persons who 

 annually visit the seas around Spitzbergen, agree in re- 

 presenting that island as utterly uninhabitable in the winter 

 months, and by reason of this apprehension the attempt 

 has never yet been made. If any such ever yet occurred, 

 the event is unknown to me ; but the consequences of such 

 an attempt, even arising from necessity in case of ship- 

 wreck, may be easily presumed on natural grounds. The 

 land, like that of Old Greenland, is mostly bare rock, in 

 some scanty spots under the intluence of the sun, in 

 summer, showing forth its cryptogamic tenants, as if the 

 beauties of expanded fructification could not be displayed 

 in such a desert soil. Man is capable of enduring much ; 

 but a climate in 80° could not be sufificiently genial to 

 prolong life in a place which every animal is known to 

 desert on the approach of winter, and all nature is clad 

 in the shroud of death, and mourned over by the howling 

 storm. 



The shore of Greenland, west, in its most northern 



