CHAPTER I 



NORTHWARD BOUND 



First Sight of Greenland — Frederikshaab Glacier — Across the Arctic Circle — 

 Perpetual Daylight — Sunlit Disko — The Climb to the Ice-cap — Dinner at 

 Inspector Anderssen's — A Native Dance — From Disko to Upernavik — Uper- 

 navik — The Governor and his Wife — The Duck Islands — Gathering Eggs 

 and Eider-down and Shooting Ducks. 



Wednesday, June 24. We have sailed and tossed, have 

 broken through the ice-barriers of Belle Isle Straits, and once 

 more ride the rolling swells of the broad Atlantic. Our three 

 days' jam in the ice has given us a foretaste of Arctic naviga- 

 tion, but the good little "Kite" speeds northward with a con- 

 fidence which inspires a feeling of security that not even the 

 famed " greyhounds of the ocean " afford. Genial Captain 

 Pike is on the bridge and off the bridge, and his keen eye is 

 casting for the land. When I came on deck to-day I found 

 the bold, wild coast of Greenland on the right. It was a 

 grand sight — the steep, black cliffs, some of them descending 

 almost vertically to the sea, their tops covered with dazzling 

 snow, and the inland ice flowing through the depressions 

 between their summits ; at the foot of the cliffs gleamed bergs 

 of various sizes and shapes, some of them a beautiful blue, 

 others white as snow. The feature of the day was the 



