NOTES FROM AN ARCTIC JOURNAL. 381 
gneiss, along which the eggs were deposited. The eggs of 
Briinnich’s Guillemot show quite as much variation in colour as 
those of Alca troile, and are quite as beautiful. To get back into 
the boat, rising and falling with the heavy swell, and to preserve 
the eggs from destruction, was a more difficult feat than landing. 
Holding the red silk handkerchief which contained the plunder, 
firmly between my teeth, I jumped blindly into the arms of the 
sailors, who caught me as they would a bale of goods. As good 
luck would have it not one of the eggs was cracked. We dropped 
anchor in the harbour of Upernivik the same day. This settlement, 
situated in lat. 72° 48’ N., is placed upon a small island: the 
inhabitants number under a hundred souls. The governor and 
missionary live in comfortable wooden houses; and there is a 
small, but neat, church. The huts of the natives are inferior to 
those at Godhavn, and so is the general appearance of the natives. 
Upernivik is certainly a most dreary looking spot: facing the 
open sea it is directly exposed to its winds and fogs; in winter 
the sun is below the horizon for seventy-nine days; and yet we 
found the Danish governor and his amiable wife seemingly cheery 
and contented with their lot. Some of the Dundee whalers had 
called at Upernivik a month before our arrival, so that Governor 
Fliescher and his wife were not very far behind us in European 
news. On landing I walked to the top of the island, which was 
nearly bare of snow, and some four hundred feet in height; the 
surface of the rock on its extreme summit showed ice-scratchings ; 
the entire island is strewed with erratic blocks. 1 observed a pair 
of Aigialitis hiaticula, and several Snow Buntings. The flora 
appeared very scanty in comparison with Disco, but Ranunculus 
pygmeus grew abundantly in swampy spots near the settlement, 
and the diminutive Belwla nana reaches the top of the island. 
The natives stretch the seal-skins in front of their “igloos,” and 
fasten them down by means of a great number of bone pegs, 
chiefly snapped off pieces of seal’s ribs; then the women set to 
work with the scrapers, now made of iron and imported from 
Denmark, and remove the adherent blubber from the skin. The 
bone pegs are similar to those I have found in the coast-middens 
of the west of Scotland; and I have no doubt they had been used 
for the same purpose. | was much struck with the intelligence of 
two young children that followed us: when they saw that we were 
interested in insects and plants they led us to the most likely spots, 
and drew our altention to some freshwater Crustacea; for every 
