CHAPTER VI 



Some drill and bore 



The solid earth, and from the strata there 

 Extract a register, by which we learn 

 That He who made it, and reveal'd its date 

 To Moses, was mistaken in its age. COWPER. 



Hare Island. Drift-wood. Upernivik Island. The catechist at 

 home. Atanikerdluk; its scenery, fossil plants, and dykes. First 

 and last impressions of Greenland. 



of the places it was our aim to visit was 

 Hare Island, off the north-west coast of 

 Disko Island, a small uninhabited island of basalt 

 and beds of ash, including some layers with 

 leaves and other fragments of a former vegetation 

 which had been overwhelmed during volcanic 

 eruptions. Landing on the beach is often very 

 difficult on account of the swell, and it was only 

 on our second visit that we were able to get ashore 

 at the desired spot. On the north side of the island 

 are the graves of some British sailors from whaling 

 ships. Whalers are now very seldom seen : British 

 ships no longer sail to these waters and in recent 

 years they have been visited only by a few Nor- 

 wegian vessels. In 1819 Sir James Ross on the 

 way to the north saw as many as forty English 

 whalers in the Vaigat. Hare Island is in some 

 places rich in flowers, but wide expanses of dark 

 brown basaltic sand with little or no vegetation 

 give it a singularly desolate and depressing appear- 

 ance. Some of the southern plants which occur on 



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