236 DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND. 



countries, dead bodies keep avcII, but the living always fare 

 ill. Witness poor Leonin, wlio returned from his voyage 

 numbed with the cold, and died soon after. 



The birds this country produces are all sea birds, and not 

 one lives upon land. There are great numbers of ducks, 

 and many other kinds of winged fowl which are unknown to 

 us. The Grand Master of Denmark not being able to ob- 

 tain any of these birds alive, caused some dead ones to be 

 brought to Copenhagen. They had beaks and feathers like 

 parrots, and feet like ducks. Those who take these birds 

 say that they have a very sweet and pleasant song, and that 

 when they sing altogether a melodious concert is formed 

 from their warbling on the water. 



The sailors who go to Spitzbcrgen for the M'hale fishery 



get there in the month of July, and leave again towards the 



middle of August. They would not be able to land, on 



account of the ice, if they arrived there before the month of 



July ; and woidd not be able to leave it, for the same reason, 



if they set off later than the middle of August. In this sea 



are found immense blocks of ice, sixty, seventy, or eighty 



fathoms thick ; 



Qnce tan turn vertice ad auras Aerias, 

 Quantum radice ad Tartara tenduut ; 



for there are places in this sea where the water is frozen 

 from the bottom to the top, and on the surface of this are 

 blocks of ice as high above as the sea is deep below. These 

 pieces of ice are clear and sparkling like glass. What ren- 

 ders the iiavigation of this sea dangerous is, that there are 

 contrary currents in these parts, where the ice melts and 

 freezes again in a moment. 



It does not seem strange after this that we should be 

 unable to determine anything certain about our first doubt, 

 or resolve assuredly that Greenland is or is not part of 

 the continent of Asia and of Tartary. The distance that 

 there is from our seas to these frozen seas, the uncertainty of 



