A HISTORY OF 



serve as an homely illustration; which, as 

 every one has seen, spreads and grows broad- 

 er 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 participate of these advantages in very 

 different proportions, and accordingly put on 

 very different appearances ; a polar prospect, 

 and a landscape at the equator, are as oppo- 

 site in their appearances as in their situation. 

 The polar regions, that receive the solar 

 beams in a very oblique direction, and conti- 

 nue 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 hideous 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 in- 

 accessible cliffs, and meets the mariner's eye 

 at even forty leagues from shore These pre- 

 cipices, frightful in themselves, receive an ad- 

 ditional horror from being constantly covered 

 with ice and snow, which daily seem to accu- 

 mulate, and 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 colour, and quite naked. Upon a near- 

 er approach, however, they are found replete 

 with many different veins of coloured stone, 

 here and there spread over with a little earth, 

 and a scanty portion of grass and heath. The 

 internal parts of the country are still more de- 

 solate and deterring. In wandering through 

 these solitudes, some plains appear covered 

 with ice, that, at first glance, seem to promise 

 the traveller an easy journey. 6 But these are 

 even more formidable and more unpassable 

 than the mountains themselves, being cleft 

 with dreadful chasms, and every where 

 abounding with pits that threaten certain de- 

 struction. The seas that surround these in- 

 hospitable coasts are still more astonishing, 

 being covered with flakes of floating ice, that 

 spread like extensive fields, or that rise out of 

 the water like enormous mountains. These, 



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

 "Ibid. p. 22. 'Ibid. p. 27. 



which are composed of materials as clear and 

 transparent as glass, c assume many strange and 

 fantastic appearances. Some of them look 

 like churches or castles, with pointed turrets ; 

 some like ships in full sail ; and people have 

 often given themselves the fruitless toil to at- 

 tempt piloting the imaginary vessels into har- 

 bour. There are still others that appear like 

 large islands, with plains, valleys, and hills, 

 which often rear their heads two hundred 

 yards above the level of the sea ; and although 

 the height of these be amazing, yet their depth 

 beneath is still more so; some of them being 

 found to sink three hundred fathom under 

 water. 



The earth presents a very different appear- 

 ance at the equator, where the sun-beams, 

 darting directly downwards, burn up the light- 

 er soils into extensive sandy deserts, or quick- 

 en all the moister tracts with incredible vege- 

 tation. In these regions, almost all the same 

 inconveniences are felt from the proximity of 

 the sun, that in the former were endured from 

 its absence The deserts are entirely barren, 

 except where they are found to produce ser- 

 pents, and that in such quantities, that some 

 extensive plains seem almost entirely covered 

 with them. u 



It not unfrequently happens also, that this 

 dry soil, which is so parched and comminu- 

 ted by the force of the sun, rises with the 

 smallest breeze of wind ; and the sands being 

 composed of parts almost as small as those of 

 water, they assume a similar appearance, roll- 

 ing onward in waves like those of a troubled 

 sea, and overwhelming all they meet with in- 

 evitable destruction. On the other hand, 

 those tracts which are fertile, teem with ve- 

 getation even to a noxious degree. The grass 

 rises to such a height as often to require burn- 

 ing ; the forests are impassable from under- 

 woods, and so matted above, that even the 

 sun, fierce as it is, can seldom penetrate.* 

 These are so thick as scarcely to be extirpa- 

 ted ; for the tops being so bound together by 

 the climbing plants that grow round them, 

 though an hundred should be cut at the bot- 

 tom, yet no one would fall, as they mutually 

 support each other. In these dark and tan- 



d Adanson's Description of Senegal. 

 e Limuri Amienit. vol. vi. p. 67- 



