THE EARTH. 



and which, consequently, endeavouring to fly off, 

 act in opposition to central attraction. The 

 twirling of a mop may serve as an homely illus- 

 tration ; which, as every one has seen, spreads, 

 and grows broader in the middle, as it continues 

 to be turned round. 



As the earth receives light and motion from the 

 sun, so it derives much of its warmth and power 

 of vegetation from the same beneficent source, 

 However, the different parts of the globe partici- 

 pate of these advantages in very different propor- 

 tions, and accordingly put on very different ap- 

 pearances : a polar prospect, and a landscape at 

 the equator, are as opposite in their appearances 

 as in their situation. 



The, polar regions, that receive the solar beams 

 in a very oblique direction, and that continue for 

 one half of the year in night, receive but few of 

 the genial comforts which other parts of the world 

 enjoy. Nothing can be more mournful or hide- 

 ous than the picture which travellers present of 

 those wretched regions. The ground,* which is 

 rocky and barren, rears itself in every place in 

 lofty mountains and inaccessible cliffs, and meets 

 the mariner's eye even forty leagues from shore. 

 These precipices, frightful in themselves, receive 

 an additional horror from being constantly co- 

 vered with ice and snow, which daily seem to ac- 

 cumulate, and to fill all the valleys with increasing 

 desolation. The few rocks and cliffs that are 

 bare of snow, look at a distance of a dark brown 



* Crantz's History of Greenland, p. 3. 



