IV 



IN THE INTERIOR OF GREENLAND 



IN the latter part of August, 1899, ^ party of nine hunters, 

 including myself, were camped in Greenland, about six hun- 

 dred miles north of the Arctic Circle and forty miles up a long, 

 narrow arm of Whale Sound, known as Olrik's Bay. The 

 shores of this picturesque fiord, which extended inland in a 

 generally eastward direction for about fifty miles, sloped grad- 

 ually up for miles on either side of the water to rugged moun- 

 tains that enclosed the ice-cap of this desolate continent. Pro- 

 tected somewhat from the cold wind blowing from glaciers and 

 the iceberg-covered sea during the summer months, the less 

 exposed slopes were here and there covered with a short growth 

 of grass mingled with Arctic flowers. 



The barren-ground caribou, which wandered over the sur- 

 rounding mountains, were attracted to these pastures during 

 the summer, and in the winter fed on the moss and lichens 

 which in places covered the rocks. Two wrecks before, for the 

 purpose of hunting these animals, we had landed from the 

 Diana twenty miles below, and laboriously rowed our heavily 

 loaded whale-boat to the most likely looking spot, and here 

 we camped. Our tent was pitched on a desolate beach beneath 

 a towering red granite mountain named by Lieutenant Peary 

 Mount Gyrfalco, from the fact that a few of these rare birds, 

 the Greenland gyrfalcon {Falco islandus), built their nests 

 among its cliffs. 



The desolation of the surrounding country was relieved only 



66 



