THE EARTH. 13 



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 at even forty leagues 

 from shore. These precipices, frightful in themselves, receive an 

 additional horror from being constantly covered with ice and snow, 

 which daily seem to accumulate, 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 nearer ap- 

 proach, 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 desolate 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, f 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 destruction. The seas that surround these 

 inhospitable 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, which are composed 

 of materials as clear and transparent as glass, J assume many strange 

 and phantastic 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 attempt piloting the 

 imaginary vessels into the harbour. 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 appearance at the equator, 

 where the sun-beams, darting directly downwards, burn up the lighter 

 soils into extensive sandy deserts, or quicken all the moister tracts 

 with incredible vegetation. In these regions, almost all the same in- 

 conveniences are felt from the proximity of the sun, that in the former 

 were endured from its absence. The deserts are entirely barren, ex- 

 cept where they are found to produce serpents, and that in such 

 quantities, that some extensive plains seem almost entirely covered 

 with them. 



It not unfrequently happens also, that this dry soil, which is so 

 parched and comminuted by the force of the sun, rises with the 

 smallest breeze of wind ; and the sands being composed of parts, al- 

 most 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 inevitable destruction. On the other hand, those 

 tracts which are fertile teem with vegetation even to a noxious degree. 

 The grass rises to such a height as often to require burning ; the forests 

 are impassable from underwoods, and so matted above, that even the 

 sun, fierce as it is, can seldom penetrate. || These are so thick as 



* Crantz's History of Greenland, p. 3. f Ibid, p. 22. \ Ibid, p. 27. 

 Adanson's Description of Senegal. | Linnsei Amsenit. vol. vi. p. 67. 



