THE EAllTH. 13 



a dark brovvn colour, and quite naked. Upon a nearer approach, 

 however, they are found replete with many different veins of 

 coloured stone, here and there spread over 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 jour- 

 ney. ' But these are even more formidable and more unpassable 

 than the mountains themselves, being cleft with di-eadful chasms, 

 and every where abounding with pits that threaten certain de- 

 struction. 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,* 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 attempt 

 piloting the imaginary vessels into 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 sunbeams, darting directly downwards, burn up the 

 lighter soils into extensive sandy deserts, or quicken all the mois- 

 ter tracts with incredible vegetation. In these regions, almost 

 ftll the same inconveniences are felt from the proximity of the 

 Bun, that in the former were endured from its absence. The 

 deserts are entirely barren, except where they are found to pro- 

 duce 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 

 60 parched and comminuted 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 



1 Crantz's History of Greenland, p. 22. 

 8 Ibid, p- 27. 3 Adanson'a Description of Seneg it. 



B 



