20 VOYAGE INTO 



pebles we pave our streets withal. On these rocks grow all 

 sorts of licrbs, grasses, and moss very plentifully ; they grow 

 up in the two months of June and July, from the seed to 

 bear seed again. 



The herbs grow thickest where the water runs or falls 

 down from the hills (and also where they are defended from 

 the north and east winds), from whence always some dust or 

 moss is carried down with it, which after a long time becomes 

 earth (yet it is rather dung than a true earth), and the birds 

 do contribute by their dung towards it. 



These mountains seem as if they were earth at top by rea- 

 son of the height, but when you are at the top of them, they 

 arc rock as well at the top as at the bottom, which we also see 

 when great pieces of them fall down. If stones are flung down 

 from these mountains, it sounds as if it thundred with an 

 echo and rattling in the valleys, as if very great pieces 

 were thrown off from the top of them. 



.The mountains are also full of cracks, wherein the birds 

 make their nests ; they all fly down from the mountains to 

 seek their food in the water ; some eat the carrion of fishes, 

 others eat small fishes and shrimps, as I shall say when I 

 treat of the birds. There are also white bears, deer,' and 

 foxes ^ in these countries. The bear liveth upon dead whales 

 or dead men, the fox feeds upon birds and their eggs, and 

 the deer eat the herbs. 



One may conjecture at the height of these mountains by 

 this ; when the skies are not very clear, the mountains stand 

 to about the middle in the clouds ; some of them look as if 

 they were a coming down every moment. 



The reason why the lowermost hills do not seem so high, 

 is because so very great ones stand near them. A ship, with 

 its mast and rigging, is no more to be compared with these 

 mountains, than a small house Avith a high steeple. The 



' Reindeer (Rangifer Tarandus). 

 ^ Arctic fox (Canis Lagopus. L.) 



