230 THE GERMAN AEGTIC EXPEDITION. 



in whose rifts tlie dear sun has enticed a flower out 

 here and there. As to the view, the neighbourhood is 

 beautiful ; but a fruitful appearance it certainly has not. 

 Indeed, provender must be some days' journey from this 

 spot, and fetched with much trouble; for the places 

 overgrown with sweet grass are sparse and very far 

 apart ; and only when quite within the Fjord can one 

 understand how cattle, at all events Greenland cattle, 

 that is animals not pampered with fodder, can be 

 reared. 



Here another kind of landscape spreads before us. The 

 high overhanging downs open out by degrees into a smooth 

 table-land, shut in by a rampart of red rocky wall, opening 

 in one spot by a pass to the neighbouring Fjord. This 

 is covered with vegetation ; though not the usual velvety 

 green mat of moss, but the real juicy fresh-coloured 

 domestic meadow. Here it is, indeed, more habitable ; 

 but here, too, the traveller misses, as he does everywhere 

 in Greenland, tree and shrub. Further inland there is a 

 continuation of willow bushes about the height of a man. 

 On the meadow-land one sees from far stones of large 

 extent laid in long rows ; this is the first trace of man's 

 energy having once ruled here. 



Before this, the journey had become laborious ; not 

 to me indeed, for I sat near the steersman, and had nothing 

 to do but to smoke my pipe, survey the neighbourhood, 

 now and then let loose a rope, and help bravely with the 

 meals. But from the entrance into the Fjord, the wind 

 had dropped ; our poor fellows had, therefore, to work 

 hard. It was late in the night, when we at length found 

 ourselves under the low cliffs of Igalliko. Twilight was 

 scarcely worth mentioning. The air was agreeably mild. 



